Professor Uses Own Cancer Scans to Teach Med Students — SkimNews
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- David Elkowitz, a pathology professor at Hofstra/Northwell's Zucker School of Medicine, was diagnosed with thymic cancer in 2017 — a malignancy accounting for less than 1% of all cancer diagnoses and 0.2%–1.5% of all malignancies overall
- Elkowitz teaches first-year medical students using his own biopsy slides, CT scans, MRIs, PET scans, and X-rays, framing each as a literal slice of a real patient
- His oncologist co-teaches the unit two weeks after his lecture, discussing the clinical decisions and emotional dimensions of his case with students
- The teaching approach was catalyzed when Elkowitz's oncologist broke through his post-diagnosis catatonic state by disclosing her own diagnosis to him — a moment he describes as restoring purpose
- Several former students who learned from Elkowitz's case-based lectures now practice as his current treating physicians
- Elkowitz is currently in treatment for a recurrence of his thymic cancer, nine years after his initial diagnosis
Why it matters: Elkowitz's model embeds humanism directly into preclinical cancer education by making the patient inseparable from the pathology — every scan is presented as belonging to someone the students will meet. With former students now treating him, the closed-loop pipeline shows that empathy taught early can return as care delivered years later.
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