Inforum's SE HealthcareNEXT Event

After Shock: Healing With Intention

All of us in the healthcare industry are aware of the chasm that sometimes exists between medical goals and patient adherence to clinical solutions. Rana Awdish, MD, has been on both sides of the chasm. As a critical care pulmonologist, she has cared for hundreds of patients; as a working mom with her own life-threatening, chronic disease, she has experienced the role of patient that has significantly altered how she practices medicine and inspired her to spread this message to caregivers across the world.

In her bestselling book, In Shock, Dr. Awdish told her story of nearly dying and the wake-up call she received as she began the long, hard road to recovery. In her new book, After Shock: Learning to Reinhabit My Body After Illness (St. Martin’s Press, on sale June 16, 2026), Dr. Awdish takes readers on a very personal journey of transforming her thinking from viewing sick bodies as broken objects, rather than sites of meaning, mystery, and quiet wisdom. Her new thinking is fueled by her own body’s signaling that she would be dead in five years.

In a world of AI being introduced as the fast and better way to care for patients, Dr. Awdish will share her thoughts on how the healthcare industry MUST focus on the patient as an individual whose life experiences contribute to better understanding who they are and what they need. Participants in this event will hear about a new imperative in improving the patient experience—casting aside the age-old belief that caregivers are solely responsible for healing and making a case for the physician as a facilitator of healing, while the patient possesses innate, bodily wisdom that significantly contributes to the healing process.

Participants will learn to:

• Recognize how personal and professional crises can reshape leadership identity and open new pathways for growth and influence.
• Identify communication strategies that foster trust, psychological safety, and authentic connection in high-pressure organizational settings.
• Examine how cultural expectations around strength, productivity, and success can hinder recovery and sustainable leadership for women.
• Apply principles of attention and presence to improve decision-making, team relationships, and client engagement.
• Reflect on their own leadership narratives to cultivate resilience, empathy, and purpose in the face of change and disruption.

To make an advanced purchase of After Shock, follow this link: https://bookshop.org/a/3014/9781250345837. Books will be available for purchase on site as well. Dr. Awdish will sign copies of the book following the event.

Dr. Rana Awdish is the bestselling author of In Shock, a landmark medical memoir. She serves as the Medical Director of Care Experience at Henry Ford Health, where she works at the intersection of clinical care, medical humanities, and culture change. A Clinical Professor at both Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and Wayne State University School of Medicine, she leads Henry Ford’s Pulmonary Hypertension Center for Comprehensive Care. She has been nationally recognized for her impact on healthcare transformation, including the Schwartz Center’s National Compassionate Caregiver of the Year Award, Press Ganey Physician of the Year and recognition as a U.S. News & World Report Healthcare Hero in 2020 for her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is triple board certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care.

Her writing has appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Harvard Business Review, and The Washington Post, and her voice has been featured by NPR, BBC, CNN, The Atlantic, and Self. Her essay, The Shape of the Shore, was awarded a Sidney by the New York Times. In 2020, the podcast This American Life chronicled the Detroit experience of COVID through Awdish’s audio diaries. She is widely regarded as a leading thinker on the moral and emotional dimensions of caregiving and healing. Her follow-up book, After Shock, which has been described as “a piercingly honest, insightful, deeply vulnerable examination of the true nature of healing,” will be published in June 2026 by Macmillan.

Moderator

Rose Glenn brings four decades of healthcare experience, including nearly 30 years in the C-suite counseling and coaching senior executives. She has led transformational change across strategy, structure and culture with deep expertise in brand strategy, executive and internal communications, media relations, issues management and digital engagement.

Today, Glenn is president of Rose Glenn & Associates, a strategic communications, branding and coaching firm. She is certified as an executive coach through the University of Michigan. Glenn is also an instructor in the Department of Communication & Media at the University of Michigan, where she was a 2021 finalist for the Golden Apple Award recognizing exceptional faculty.

Glenn most recently served as chief communications & marketing officer for Michigan Medicine. Previously, she spent 18 years at Henry Ford Health as senior vice president of marketing and chief experience & communications officer.

 

EVENT DETAILS

Time
8:00 - 9:30 a.m.

Admission
$25 - Members
$35 - Nonmembers

Location
Ford Hall
Henry Ford Hospital
2799 West Grand Boulevard
Detroit, MI 48202

1.5 MCACHE CEU hours available for attendees.

Thank you to our sponsors!

Statewide sponsor: 

Supporting sponsors:

Mentorship sponsor:

HealthcareNEXT is for Inforum members who want to stay ahead of health care’s next curve, trend, opportunity or insight. The group is focused on sharing knowledge, increasing understanding of key health care issues, and offering unique professional development and relationship-building opportunities for health care providers and health plans, the payer community, educators, consultants, attorneys and other experts who routinely work in health care.