Hamza Abbasi ’16 is familiar with trauma and tragedy; in the healthcare sector, it often comes with the territory. Abbasi — who currently works as an internal medicine hospitalist at Stanford University Hospital — spent time as a frontline healthcare worker during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He compiled a series of lessons he learned from his patients in their final moments and, on Sept. 17, 2024, published those experiences in print. Abbasi’s book, “Wisdom of the Dying,” is an emotionally charged collection of stories chronicling the last reflections of his patients — exploring the roles of positive psychology and medical science in the face of illness and death. The Dartmouth sat down with Abbasi to discuss his background in the medical industry and how his experiences during the pandemic culminated in his book.
What did you study at Dartmouth, and what experiences on campus led you to pursue healthcare?
HA: I grew up in the Sacramento, Calif., area but did my undergrad at Dartmouth. At Dartmouth, I studied neuroscience and public policy. I was involved with the Tucker Center for Spiritual Life as a community service and engagement organizer. I was also involved with the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, which dealt more with public policy. During my junior or senior year, I was the student director at the Tucker Center, and I got to learn how to interact with student groups of different spiritual faiths. That was really one of the highlights of my time in college. Then, I went to medical school at Northwestern University, graduated in 2020 and started my internal medicine residency at Scripps College in La Jolla, Calif.. My residency was really caring for COVID-19 patients, and Scripps was one of the centers for COVID-19 patients during the pandemic surges, especially for critical care patients. That was kind of my pathway post-Dartmouth.
What roles have faith and spirituality played in your life, and how did you incorporate those values into “Wisdom of the Dying”?
HA: Faith and spirituality played a very big role in my life, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when I would draw upon my faith and practices of mindfulness to give me strength. My time at the Tucker Center equipped me with the skill set to effectively communicate and care for my patients who draw upon faith in a similar way, regardless of what their religious background may be. Dartmouth and the Tucker Center really emphasize multifaith collaboration and being able to communicate with individuals of different spiritual backgrounds. They strive to promote common projects that benefit all communities. That kind of skill set really helped me care for patients as they were passing away — to address a lot of their concerns both spiritually as well as medically. Faith gave me a lot of personal strength, but I think it also gave me the ability to provide an extra level of humanism to my care.
The stories you share in “Wisdom of the Dying” are deeply personal and vulnerable, both to you and your patients. Besides relying on your faith, how else did you navigate the emotional challenges that were brought on by COVID-19?
HA: As a healthcare provider, it’s always a tough thing to effectively practice what you preach. A lot of people intellectually know how to be able to cope with difficult things, but it’s much harder to practice. So, during the pandemic, I remember my coworkers and I would work on acknowledging the difficulty of the situation, really acknowledging and accepting it and working with each other to see how we could help each other go through it, especially during the pandemic surges. We were not just helping each other in logistical manners with the job. We were also just there for each other when the days got really tough. I got to really learn from and grow from these exceptional individuals.
There are a variety of lessons you share throughout your book about making the most out of life and coming to terms with death. What was your most important takeaway from your medical experience?
HA: Making sure that we live our life while being cognizant that it will eventually end so that we make the most of every moment. A lot of the other lessons stem from that and are a subset of that — having a mindset where you’re cognizant of death in a positive way, not in a morbid way. Live your life in a purpose-driven manner, where you value and maximize every moment. As a physician, I get really excited by thinking about how instituting a mindset of gratitude and having regular gratitude practices is directly linked to stronger immune systems, better sleep quality and lower stress levels, really on the molecular level. Lower cortisol levels, lower blood pressure — it’s all directly tied to physiological health.
What do you hope readers take away from “Wisdom of the Dying”?
HA: I hope they take away how the little things that we do every day add up, whether that be the way we think about things day to day or the habits that we have. They really compound over the course of our life to a point that they make a big difference when we look back upon our life. So, sometimes it can be easy to discount what the small things are. But the small things really add up to a lifetime. Make the most of them. That was certainly what I took away from my experience through the pandemic and, in turn, what I hope that readers will take away from my book.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
