Biography

Michael W. Rabow, M.D., is a Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, at the University of California, San Francisco. Board-certified in internal medicine and hospice & palliative care, Dr. Rabow directs a leading outpatient palliative care consultation program-- the Symptom Management Service-- at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a member of the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators. Dr. Rabow attended UCSF for medical school and general internal medicine residency training. He completed fellowships at UCSF in general medicine, as well as in medical education research. His widely-published research work is in palliative care, family caregiving, and end-of-life care education. Dr. Rabow conducted one of the few controlled trials to date of outpatient palliative care consultation, as well as a survey of current outpatient palliative care consultation practices in comprehensive cancer centers nationally. Dr. Rabow was Assistant Editor for the recently completed bimonthly section in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “Perspectives on Care at the Close of Life.” This series now appears as a palliative care textbook, Care at the Close of Life. He serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of the Healer’s Art at the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonwealth in California. Dr. Rabow is the Assistant Editor of the best-selling general medicine textbook, Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment. Dr. Rabow is the executive producer of “The Caregivers” documentary film and accompanying family caregiver handbook. He has written and taught widely about family caregiving and communication with patients and families around serious news and existential issues at the end-of-life. Dr. Rabow served as a Soros Foundation Project on Death in America Faculty Scholar and has been recognized for his work in palliative care as a 2012 recipient of the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation Physicians Award from the Hastings Center.

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