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The Human Connection: There is No Such Thing as Compassion Fatigue

Dr. Rakel started his career near the Teton Mountains in Driggs, Idaho where he was in rural private practice for five years before completing a two-year residential fellowship in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center. He was the founder and director of the University of Wisconsin Integrative Medicine Program and was awarded tenure in the department of family medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health in 2010. Dr. Rakel is co-editor of the Textbook of Family Medicine (8th and 9th eds), Editor of Integrative Medicine (1-4 eds), co-editor of Conn’s Current Therapy and editor-in-chief of Primary Care Practice Update.

He is author of a book on the power of the therapeutic relationship titled, The Compassionate Connection (WW. Norton Publishing). He has received NIH funding to study the ‘clinician effect’ and to incorporate healing modalities into medical school curricula. His team was awarded a 6-year contract to educate clinicians in the Veterans Health Care Administration towards a Personalized, Proactive and Patient Driven cultural shift in health care delivery. He has been awarded a number of teaching awards including the Baldwin E. Lloyd clinical teacher award, the UW Department of Family Medicine faculty excellence award, the Marc Hansen lecture award, the resident teacher-of-the-year award, The Leonard Tow Faculty compassion award and has been elected to the Gold Humanism medical society.

His professional passion is to explore complex systems and develop insight into how each can find a path towards health. This focus has served in addressing clinician burnout and strategizing to improve health care delivery systems. Dr. Rakel is now the Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque, New Mexico.