Grace E Farris, MD Email Grace Farris

Grace Farris, MD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, and Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine at Mount Sinai West.  Dr. Grace Farris graduated from Brown Medical School and completed her Internal Medicine residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. During her residency she developed an interest in using narrative medicine and elements from the medical humanities to teach clinical medicine. As a senior resident and primary care chief resident at the Boston VA hospital, she piloted a literature and medicine workshop for students and residents that utilized war literature (excerpts from The Things They Carried and Catch-22) as a way of framing discussions around caring for veterans with Agent Orange exposure and PTSD. She was recognized by her peers with the Katherine Swan Ginsburg Award, an award for a senior resident who demonstrates a commitment to compassionate care and communication.

Following residency Dr. Farris joined the hospitalist group at BIDMC. As an academic hospitalist she continued to combine medical humanities with her wards-based teaching. She was a member of the BIDMC Schwartz Rounds Steering Committee, BIDMC Ethics Liaison Committee and the BIDMC Ethics Advisory. During the 2015-2016 academic year Dr. Farris was a fellow in bioethics at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics.

While at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dr. Farris served as the co-course director of the Harvard Medical School Aging: Bench to Bedside fourth year elective. She introduced narrative medicine into her educational efforts via a curriculum that she implemented in fall 2015 for the core clerkship and sub-internship students that uses narrative medicine to explore care transitions and the care of the hospitalized elderly.

As a hospitalist Dr. Farris also became keenly aware of the dangerous care transitions that older adults face when leaving the hospital, and she sought out work in this arena. She provided post-acute care at Wingate of Needham Skilled Nursing Facility, and she spent a year working at BIDMC’s Healthcare Associates Post-Discharge Clinic. In 2015 she became the co-director of the ECHO Care Transitions program and research study at BIDMC, where she lead a novel videoconferencing multidisciplinary clinic that connects hospital-based teams with providers at nearby post-acute care sites in order to enhance communication and patient outcomes for older adults who are discharged to skilled nursing facilities.

Dr. Farris joined the Icahn Mount Sinai School of Medicine in January 2017 as Chief of Hospital Medicine at Mount Sinai West.