A space for reflection, voice, and collective action.

#UnmaskMedicine is a storytelling movement rooted in our shared humanity as clinicians, patients, and families. It surfaces what often goes unspoken in medicine and connects individual experiences to collective action.

Our vision is one of a humane, sustainable culture of care — where patients and care teams are seen, supported, and encouraged to show up whole, rather than asked to sacrifice themselves to receive or provide care.

Origin

In 2025, I read Dr. Paul Fedak’s The Silent Cost of Excellence. His candor illuminated a pattern I’ve witnessed for years: stories connect people and move them to act. In the days that followed, more voices surfaced — honest, unfiltered, and brave. I reached out, and we connected.

From Movement to Space

Drawing on my experience with #ILookLikeASurgeon — and the way a simple hashtag can connect people globally and amplify a collective voice — we began to imagine the potential. Not a campaign, but a space. Not a single story, but many.

Evolution of Platform

More than a decade after #ILookLikeASurgeon, the social media landscape has changed. Hashtags don’t function the way they once did. While a simple Blogspot site was enough to carry that earlier movement, platforms have evolved — and so has our approach. Innovating here means recognizing when the tools of the past are no longer enough, and being willing to build something new. Substack offers a different kind of space — one that supports sustained reflection and builds community — while still allowing ideas to be amplified across other social channels.

And yet, the underlying power remains: the ability to connect across distance, to surface what might otherwise stay unseen, and to gather a collective voice. #UnmaskMedicine grew from that recognition — a space where voices can be heard, where they can gather, and where they can take a seat at the table.

Core Premise

This space is grounded in a simple premise: what is left unspoken shapes how we practice — and how care is experienced. That experience is not limited to clinicians. Patients and families carry their own layers — fear, uncertainty, hope, and meaning — often within systems that were not designed with their full experience in mind. What remains unspoken on one side is often felt deeply on the other.

From Reflection to Action

When we create space to reflect across those experiences — clinician, patient, and family — we begin to understand care more fully. And because reflection without action is not enough, this work moves from understanding into responsibility and action.

Leadership Practice

At its core, this is a leadership practice: notice what is present, name what others may hesitate to say, and take responsibility for what follows. Leadership here is relational and distributed — grounded in the courage to speak with clarity, to listen with intention, and to act with purpose.

Collective Action

We have seen what is possible when voices align: residents organizing for safe staffing and access to essential health care; NHS registrars standing up for fair working conditions; advocates challenging obesity bias in care; and communities confronting the unacceptable disparities in maternal outcomes for Black women. Stories catalyze collective action. They reshape expectations of care.

#UnmaskMedicine exists to connect those moments — to move from understanding to action, from individual stories to collective change, and to allow something more honest — and more human — to emerge, together.