Rana Awdish

Dr. Rana Awdish is the Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and a Critical Care Physician. She also serves as Medical Director of Care Experience for the Henry Ford Health System. Dr. Awdish’s mandate as well as her passion is to improve the patient experience across the system. After suffering a sudden critical illness herself in 2008, she has become a tireless activist, refocusing her fellow providers on the patient experience and improving empathy through connection and communication. She lectures to physicians, hospital leadership and medical schools around the country. Her book, In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope, has been featured in the Washington Post, NPR, The Today Show, The Times Literary Supplement, and is now an LA Times Bestseller. Dr. Awdish received the Schwartz Center’s National Compassionate Caregiver of the Year Award in 2017. She was named Physician of the Year by Press Ganey in 2017 for her work on improving communication, and received the Critical Care Teaching Award in 2016. She, along with three others, began the CLEAR Conversations Project at Henry Ford, using improvisational actors to train physicians in patient-centered empathic communication. Prior to coming to Henry Ford, Dr. Awdish completed her training at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in Manhattan. She attended Wayne State University Medical School, and completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.