Closer to Osler

Making health care more welcoming for LGBTQ patients. Tried and true tips for avoiding physician burnout. Lessons clinicians can learn from therapy dogs.

Such articles, authored by Johns Hopkins health care professionals and by physicians from other institutions, are among the compelling pieces featured on CLOSLER.org, a new website launched in March by leaders of the Miller Coulson Academy of Clinical Excellence. Its mission: to share the latest insights and perspectives about clinical excellence to doctors all over the country and around the world.

The new website, a portmanteau of “Closer” and “Osler,” is named for William Osler, the “father of modern medicine” and one of the “Big Four” founding professors of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is most famous for articulating an early patient-centric pursuit of medicine: “The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”

CLOSLER.org is organized around four central content areas that are critical to clinical excellence: connecting with patients, clinical reasoning, passion in the medical profession and lifelong learning in clinical excellence. Contributors from across Johns Hopkins and beyond are providing the site with concise reflections aimed at inspiring and informing. In addition to original content, CLOSLER.org also includes “curated content”—physician commentary on pertinent articles from the other publications that offer thought-provoking insights and perspectives on great doctoring.