Emily Silverman, MD

Assistant Professor

Emily Silverman, MD is a hospital medicine physician at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG), Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and creator/host of The Nocturnists, a medical storytelling live show and podcast. Since 2016, The Nocturnists has produced over a dozen live performances in the Bay Area and New York City, three seasons of its podcast, and two audio diary series called "Stories from a Pandemic," and "Black Voices in Healthcare."

The Nocturnists has been featured by NPR’s Snap Judgment, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, and the Bay Area Science Festival. Dr. Silverman's writing has been supported by MacDowell and published in The New York Times, JAMA, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and McSweeneys. In 2020, Dr. Silverman was on the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 List, which celebrates creative changemakers whose work is in service of building sustainable, equitable, and regenerative communities.

Dr. Silverman is a dynamic speaker, and has inspired audiences at UCSF, Kaiser, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, MindBodyGreen, and The Esalen Institute. Her engagements illustrate the power of storytelling to impact healthcare delivery, shape medical culture, ignite creativity, and catalyze individual and institutional change.

She lives in San Francisco with her husband, some musical instruments, and many plants.
Education
2018 - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Champion Training, University of California
Residency, 2017 - Internal Medicine, UCSF
M.D., 2014 - School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University
B.A., 2009 - History of Art and Architcture, Brown University
Honors and Awards
  • Nonfiction Writing Fellowship, MacDowell, 2018
  • Reza Gandjei Humanism Award, UCSF, 2017
  • Great Experience Award, UCSF, 2016
Publications
  1. Silverman E. The Headstand. Chest 2021. PMID: 34099132


  2. Silverman E. Comic Relief. JAMA 2019. PMID: 31334798


  3. Silverman E, Haber LA, Geha RM. Lift Then Shift: Thyrotoxic Periodic Paralysis. The American journal of medicine 2018. PMID: 30201247


  4. Silverman E. Sharing and Healing Through Storytelling in Medicine. JAMA internal medicine 2017. PMID: 28828470


  5. Holtzman, J., Natsuhara, K., Silverman, E. (2020) In Service of Patients and Their Companions: Service Animals in the Hospital. SGIM Forum 43 (4): 10-11.. Untitled Publication "Are Telehealth Visits Feasible for Vulnerable Patients?" . PMID: