Dr. Anthony Back

Anthony Back MD is Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has been deeply involved in the development of palliative care in the US. His research on patient-clinician communication has been funded by the NIH and he spun this research into a social startup, VitalTalk, that has disseminated serious illness communication skills to 200,000 clinicians worldwide. In 2018, he published a first person account of his initial journey with psilocybin in the Journal of Palliative Medicine (What Psilocybin Taught Me About Dying). He is now principal investigator on the only clinical trial testing psilocybin-assisted therapy for doctors and nurses with symptoms of burnout and depression associated with the pandemic.