Foundational Certificate alum, Téa Christopoulos, is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology where her research explores invisible disability, suffering, and medical uncertainty. Her work has a particular focus on applying narrative-based medicine to undergraduate medical education and clinical care to improve how students learn about, and care for, people living with invisible disabilities.

Her latest work has been published in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry. Co-authored with Elizabeth Peter, “An Ethics of Care, Relational Suffering, and Contested Invisible Disability” applies a care ethics lens to reconceptualize suffering as relational within patient-provider relationships involving individuals living with invisible disabilities.

The paper further explores the potential of narrative-based medicine, an approach that remains relatively underexplored in this context, to strengthen therapeutic alliances and to mitigate suffering for both patients and physicians.

More broadly, the paper calls for the greater integration and centering of the medical humanities in medical education to improve how future physicians learn how to navigate the complexities of invisible disability.