Professional Statement
Gaetan Sgro joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in Fall 2013 after completing his internal medicine residency and chief residency at UPMC. He received his MD from Jefferson Medical College and a BA in English Literature from the College of William and Mary.
Dr. Sgro is a clinician-educator and writer who aims to cultivate meaning, empathy, and purpose by incorporating poetry, storytelling, and other health humanities into health professions education. His scholarly work focus on the benefits of perspective taking and life story work for doctors and patients.
At the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPSoM), Dr. Sgro served as the Co-Director of the Area of Concentration in Medical Humanities and Ethics from 2017-2023 and continues as Co-Director for the Humanities and Ethics Stream. He has developed and continues to teach health humanities courses and workshops for Pitt medical students, undergraduate and graduate students, and health professions trainees. He has been the Chapter Advisor for the Gold Humanism Honor Society at UPSoM since 2024.
A member of Pitt’s Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators, he is the recipient of teaching awards including the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, the Golden Apple Teaching Award and the Carl R. Fuhrman Clinical Educator of the Year Award. His poems have appeared in Rattle, the Bellevue Literary Review, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, the Best New Poets Anthology, and elsewhere. He is an associate editor for the Journal of General Internal Medicine’s Healing Arts section.
Appointments
- Associate Professor of Medicine Division of General Internal Medicine School of Medicine
- Associate Program Director UPMC Internal Medicine Residency
- Core Faculty Institute for Bioethics
Education and Training
- Chief Residency, University of Pittsburgh, 2013
- Internal Medicine Residency, University of Pittsburgh, 2012
- MD, Jefferson Medical College, 2009
- BA, College of William and Mary, 2004
Professional Interests in Bioethics
Representative Publications
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Sgro G. “Bring Yourself to Work.” Journal of Graduate Medical Education: April 2018, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 230-231
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Sgro, G. “Earthed Lightning: A Prescription for Poetry in Practice and Teaching.” Academic Medicine: August 2021 – Volume 96 – Issue 8 – p 1105-1107
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Sgro G. “A Physician’s Grammar.”. Ann Intern Med. 2018;169(3):196
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Sgro, G, “The Problem With Oxygen.” Ann Intern Med. 2019;170(11):812
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Sgro G. “Noncompliant.” Ann Intern Med. 2024;177(8):1137.
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Sgro G. Ars Poetica Medica. JAMA. Published online April 08, 2026. doi:10.1001/jama.2026.2730
Awards and Honors
- Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Faculty Award, Presented by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine 2017 graduating class and the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, 2017
- Golden Apple Award for Teaching and Mentorship “for the faculty member who has contributed most to the experience” of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Class of 2019 , 2019
- Carl R. Fuhrman Clinical Educator of the Year Award, for co-directing the course “Literature, Narrative, and the Experience of Illness”, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, 2022
- Diploma Day Faculty Speaker, Invited by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Class of 2022, 2022
- Medical Student Research Mentoring Merit Award, Dean’s Summer Research Program, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, 2023
- Diploma Day Invocation Address, Invited by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Class of 2024, 2024
- Diploma Day Invocation Address, Invited by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Class of 2025, 2025