Overview
Karen Jooste, MD, MPH is a palliative care physician and pediatrician at Duke University. She works on the Pediatric Quality of Life team at Duke Children’s Hospital and Health Center, and with adults in both palliative care and hospice care. She completed her residency in Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of New York at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, her Master of Public Health at the Mailman School of Medicine, Columbia University and her Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at Duke. She trained as an Integrative Health Coach at Duke Integrative Medicine in 2012. Her passion as both a clinician and an educator, is the intersection between communication, racial and gender equity, ethics and medical humanities (narrative medicine).
Dr. Jooste teaches narrative medicine to interprofessional students (Medicine, Nursing, PT and PA students) through the Trent Center at Duke and co-leads annual workshops at Duke Integrative Medicine in Leading Others in Writing for Health. She is a Faculty leader and educator in the Clinical Skills Foundation Course at the Duke School of Medicine. She is trained as a VitalTalk trainer and facilitator in Advanced Communication Skills and teaches as part of the PEACCE Corps Education Team (Promoting Equity and Alignment of Care via Communication Education). Dr Jooste is the Vice Chief of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion of the Division of Palliative Care. She facilitates workshops at Duke called Conversations with Colleagues to promote and strengthen diversity, inclusion , antiracism and belonging.
One of her favorite roles is as a coach for the Duke Residency Professional Development Coaching Program. She also serves as an Ethics Consultant at Duke University Hospital and as a member of the Professional Accountability (PACT) team, promoting professionalism.