2 - Uncertainty in Medicine: Looking with Uncertainty with Alexa Miller

The Nocturnists

Step inside Alexa Miller’s classroom, where paintings become portals and doctors learn to see like patients. In this episode, Alexa leads a powerful exercise called the “image circle,” where clinicians reflect on their own experiences of medical uncertainty and choose artworks that speak to those moments. What follows is anything but abstract—through close looking and deep conversation, participants begin to feel what it’s like to sit on the other side of the exam table. Alexa, a trailblazer at the crossroads of art and medicine, shares frameworks for understanding uncertainty and introduces her BOLD framework for navigating uncertainty in healthcare.

Find show notes, transcripts, and more at thenocturnists.org, and subscribe to our substack.

The "Uncertainty in Medicine" series is generously funded by the ABIM Foundation, by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, and the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation.

The Nocturnists is supported by The California Medical Association and donations from listeners like you.

Host: Emily Silverman, MD

Uncertainty Correspondent: Alexa Miller

Series Illustrations by Eleni Debo