Rachel Schwartz, PhD, BA

Assistant Adjunct Professor
[email protected]
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Biography: 

Dr. Rachel Schwartz is a mixed-methods Communication Scientist and Health Services Researcher focused on system-level interventions for improving clinician retention and well-being, optimizing interprofessional team communication, efficiency of practice, and patient safety.

She is the lead editor of Emotion in the Clinical Encounter (McGraw Hill, 2021), a medical education textbook that provides clinicians with tools for navigating psychosocial aspects of the medical encounter.

Additional areas of interest include improving mentoring & sponsorship in academic medicine, exploring the unique professional needs of physician-scientists, and providing research mentorship on projects focusing on global health and underserved populations.

Publications: 
Sinskey JL, Schwartz R, Boscardin CK, Chang JM, Kumar SB, Lebares CC. Looking Across the Drape: A Novel Quality Improvement Approach to Understanding Surgeon and Anesthesiologist Burnout. Ann Surg. 2024 Feb 20.
Fuehrer S, Weil A, Osterberg LG, Zulman DM, Meunier MR, Schwartz R. Building Authentic Connection in the Patient-Physician Relationship. J Prim Care Community Health. 2024 Jan-Dec; 15:21501319231225996.
Schwartz R, Williams MF, Feldman MD. Does Sponsorship Promote Equity in Career Advancement in Academic Medicine? A Scoping Review. J Gen Intern Med. 2024 Feb; 39(3):470-480.
Anand U, Schwartz R, Stonnington CM. Using Their Words to Shape Curricula: Targeted Well-Being Programming for Graduate Medical Education Trainees. Acad Psychiatry. 2023 Nov 28.
Hall JA, Duong F, Schwartz R. On the proliferation of the empathy concept in healthcare and medical education research. Patient Educ Couns. 2024 Feb; 119:108041.
Schwartz R, Weimer-Elder B, Wilkins E, Deka D, Wong S, Dang BK, Brown R, Kline M, Kwan L. Developing a feedback-rich culture in academic medicine: the effect of coaching and 360-feedback on physician leadership. BMC Med Educ. 2022 Oct 24; 22(1):733.
Farkas AH, Merriam S, Frayne S, Hardman L, Schwartz R, Kolehmainen C. Retaining Providers with Women's Health Expertise: Decreased Provider Loss Among VHA Women's Health Faculty Development Program Attendees. J Gen Intern Med. 2022 09; 37(Suppl 3):786-790.
Schwartz R, Blanch-Hartigan D, Valbuena G, Weil A, Dubey M, Catzen HZ, Hall JA, Sanders JJ. Reply to "Empathic communication: The premise of inclusive care for historically excluded populations". Cancer. 2022 07 15; 128(14):2838-2839.
Schwartz R, Osterberg LG, Hall JA. Physicians, emotion, and the clinical encounter: A survey of physicians' experiences. Patient Educ Couns. 2022 07; 105(7):2299-2306.
Hall JA, Schwartz R. Empathy, an important but problematic concept. J Soc Psychol. 2022 Jan 02; 162(1):1-6.
Altamirano J, Kline M, Schwartz R, Fassiotto M, Maldonado Y, Weimer-Elder B. The effect of a relationship-centered communication program on patient experience and provider wellness. Patient Educ Couns. 2022 07; 105(7):1988-1995.
Schwartz, Rachel Hall, Judith A. Osterberg, Lars G.. Emotion in the Clinical Encounter. 2021.
Maitra A, Kamdar MR, Zulman DM, Haverfield MC, Brown-Johnson C, Schwartz R, Israni ST, Verghese A, Musen MA. Using ethnographic methods to classify the human experience in medicine: a case study of the presence ontology. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2021 08 13; 28(9):1900-1909.
Sanders JJ, Dubey M, Hall JA, Catzen HZ, Blanch-Hartigan D, Schwartz R. What is empathy? Oncology patient perspectives on empathic clinician behaviors. Cancer. 2021 Nov 15; 127(22):4258-4265.
Schwartz R, Dubey M, Blanch-Hartigan D, Sanders JJ, Hall JA. Physician empathy according to physicians: A multi-specialty qualitative analysis. Patient Educ Couns. 2021 10; 104(10):2425-2431.
Hamill Howard E, Schwartz R, Feldstein B, Grudzen M, Klein L, Piderman KM, Wang D. Harnessing the Chaplain's Capacity to Identify Unmet Palliative Needs of Vulnerable Older Adults in the Emergency Department. J Palliat Care. 2022 Oct; 37(4):480-485.
Hall JA, Schwartz R, Duong F, Niu Y, Dubey M, DeSteno D, Sanders JJ. What is clinical empathy? Perspectives of community members, university students, cancer patients, and physicians. Patient Educ Couns. 2021 05; 104(5):1237-1245.
Schwartz R, Frayne SM, Friedman S, Romodan Y, Berg E, Haskell SG, Shaw JG. Retaining VA Women's Health Primary Care Providers: Work Setting Matters. J Gen Intern Med. 2021 03; 36(3):614-621.
Hall JA, Schwartz R, Duong F. How do laypeople define empathy? J Soc Psychol. 2021 Jan 02; 161(1):5-24.
Schwartz R, Sinskey JL, Anand U, Margolis RD. Addressing Postpandemic Clinician Mental Health : A Narrative Review and Conceptual Framework. Ann Intern Med. 2020 12 15; 173(12):981-988.
Haverfield MC, Tierney A, Schwartz R, Bass MB, Brown-Johnson C, Zionts DL, Safaeinili N, Fischer M, Shaw JG, Thadaney S, Piccininni G, Lorenz KA, Asch SM, Verghese A, Zulman DM. Can Patient-Provider Interpersonal Interventions Achieve the Quadruple Aim of Healthcare? A Systematic Review. J Gen Intern Med. 2020 07; 35(7):2107-2117.
Zulman DM, Haverfield MC, Shaw JG, Brown-Johnson CG, Schwartz R, Tierney AA, Zionts DL, Safaeinili N, Fischer M, Thadaney Israni S, Asch SM, Verghese A. Practices to Foster Physician Presence and Connection With Patients in the Clinical Encounter. JAMA. 2020 01 07; 323(1):70-81.
Schwartz R, Shanafelt TD, Gimmler C, Osterberg L. Developing institutional infrastructure for physician wellness: qualitative Insights from VA physicians. BMC Health Serv Res. 2020 Jan 03; 20(1):7.
Brown-Johnson C, Schwartz R, Maitra A, Haverfield MC, Tierney A, Shaw JG, Zionts DL, Safaeinili N, Thadaney Israni S, Verghese A, Zulman DM. What is clinician presence? A qualitative interview study comparing physician and non-physician insights about practices of human connection. BMJ Open. 2019 11 03; 9(11):e030831.
Schwartz R, Trivedi R, Gray C, Lorenz KA, Zulman D. Neurologist Strategies for Optimizing the Parkinson's Disease Clinical Encounter. J Geriatr Psychiatry Neurol. 2019 09; 32(5):246-256.
Schwartz R, Haverfield MC, Brown-Johnson C, Maitra A, Tierney A, Bharadwaj S, Shaw JG, Azimpour F, Thadaney Israni S, Verghese A, Zulman DM. Transdisciplinary Strategies for Physician Wellness: Qualitative Insights from Diverse Fields. J Gen Intern Med. 2019 07; 34(7):1251-1257.
Schwartz R, Zulman D, Gray C, Goldstein MK, Trivedi R. "It's a disease of families": Neurologists' insights on how to improve communication and quality of life for families of Parkinson's disease patients. Chronic Illn. 2020 09; 16(3):201-211.
Hall JA, Schwartz R. Empathy present and future. J Soc Psychol. 2019; 159(3):225-243.
Schwartz R, Sharek PJ. Changing the Game for Hand Hygiene Conversations. Hosp Pediatr. 2018 03; 8(3):168-169.
Schwartz R, Rothermich K, Kotz SA, Pell MD. Unaltered emotional experience in Parkinson's disease: Pupillometry and behavioral evidence. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2018 04; 40(3):303-316.
Schwartz R, Pell MD. When emotion and expression diverge: The social costs of Parkinson's disease. J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2017 Apr; 39(3):211-230.
Schwartz R, Pell MD. Emotional speech processing at the intersection of prosody and semantics. PLoS One. 2012; 7(10):e47279.