Physician Blog -- Kate Scannell, MD

Kate Scannell lives, writes, gardens, and practices medicine in Northern California. Since 2000, she has been a syndicated medical-opinion columnist for several Bay Area newspapers, including The Oakland Tribune, and The Contra Costa Times. Her columns explore the ethical and sociopolitical dimensions of American health care. She has also published extensively in professional and lay media.

Informed by her tenure as the medical director for one of the country's first hospital AIDS wards, she wrote Death of the Good Doctor -- Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic (Cleis, 1999). This memoir recounts her coming-of-age as a physician through her experiences while caring for people with AIDS during the early epidemic years (1985-1990). The memoir was re-issued in electronic format in 2010 (Amazon Kindle).

More recently, in 2010 she published the novel Flood Stage, a collection of inter-related stories involving townspeople who are caught up in a devastating flood. Torrential rains pour into Thalburg Canyon, California. When they overfill the Baptista River, a flood threatens the community and the interconnected stories of the canyon residents are acted out on center stage. A paralyzed woman, exhausted by her life, plans an opportune death in the flood. A young boy is transformed after his mother salvages his amputated finger from the riverbank. Couples drift together and apart over old affairs and insurance coverage mistakes. A man burdened by a toxic secret struggles for atonement as the flood encroaches upon his final opportunity for redemption. These and other stories portray a series of unique personal histories caught up in a universal human drama.

Kate is board certified in Internal Medicine, Rheumatology, and Geriatrics. She also edits three newsletters, "Ethics Rounds", "Just-a-Minute Ethics", and "Remembering Dementia."

Quite simply, she loves medicine and writing.