Sunita Puri

Biography

Sunita Puri, MD, MS, is Director of the Inpatient Palliative Medicine Service and HS Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine. She received her MD from the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program and completed her fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at Stanford University. A Rhodes Scholar, Puri earned an MA in Modern History-South Asia from Oxford University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Yale University.

Puri is the author of "That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour," a memoir published by Viking/Penguin Random House in 2019. The book received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, and was featured on PBS, NPR, The Atlantic, and People Magazine. She has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, and JAMA, with her essays addressing topics ranging from COVID-19 mortality to the ethics of CPR. Her work has been recognized through writing residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and Mesa Refuge, and she was awarded a Bogliasco Foundation Literature Fellowship.

Puri has served as Program Director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at UMass Chan School of Medicine and as Medical Director of the Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care Program at USC's Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center, where she also chaired the Ethics Resource Committee. She is co-principal investigator on a Macy Foundation grant developing communication curricula for residents and fellows on disclosure of medical errors. Puri has delivered keynote addresses and plenary lectures at institutions including Vanderbilt University, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the International Congress on Hospice and Palliative Care, and has been invited to speak at conferences in Nigeria, Canada, India, and Singapore.

Education

• MD, University of California (UC) Berkeley-University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Joint Medical Program, 2010
• MS in Health and Medical Sciences, UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, 2007
• MA in Modern History-South Asia, St. Antony's College, Oxford University, 2004
• BA in Cultural Anthropology, Yale University, 2002

Distinctions

• Rhodes Scholarship, Oxford University, 2002-2004
• Beit Prize in Commonwealth History, History Faculty at Oxford University, 2004
• Kirkaldy Prize in History of Medicine, History Faculty at Oxford University, 2004
• Bogliasco Foundation Literature Fellowship, 2024-2025
• Flexner Lecture, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, 2024
• Writing Residency Award, MacDowell Colony Artists, 2017
• Writing Residency Award, Yaddo Corporation, 2022
• Ewing Halsell Distinguished Lecturer, Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, University of Texas, 2021
• University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine Thome P. Sparkman Jr. Distinguished Lectureship on Humanism and Professionalism, 2024
• Guest Faculty, University of California Riverside Nonfiction Writing Faculty, Master Of Fine Arts Residency Program, 2023