Patiently Waiting For… is the story of the indomitable, feisty, and subversive Ruth, who, having quadriplegia, longs to access a wider world through use of available software and a computer. She decides to almost run over, with her power chair, a physician who is also a writer of health-related social justice plays and ask him to write her story. What results is this powerful indictment of the inequality of care and diminishing access to accommodation that has widened the divide between those who can afford to pay for health promotion and those who cannot.

Jeff Nisker is a clinician, researcher, university professor, and writer. His plays and short stories bring the general public, health professionals, and policy makers to the position of persons immersed in the social inequities of new scientific capacities. Jeff has received many research grants in the basic, clinical, and social sciences to study prevention of estrogen-related cancer, ethical and social issues in reproductive genetics, and the lack of accommodation that persons with disabilities receive for health promotion. Jeff has also co-held a Canadian Institutes of Health Research/Health Canada grant to research public engagement and citizen deliberation for health policy development through his innovative use of full-length theatre. Jeff has authored or co-authored over 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles and book chapters, many short stories, and seven plays published in the collection From Calcedonies to Orchids: Plays Promoting Humanity in Health Policy. His plays have been performed throughout Canada, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. Jeff has served on the editorial boards of Journal of Medical Humanities and ARS Medica and is the international representative on the Board of the Centre for Literature and Medicine. Jeff has served national positions such as Co-chair of Health Canada’s Advisory Committee on Reproductive and Genetic Technologies; Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada; Scientific Officer of the CIHR Peer Review Committee on Health Ethics, Law and Humanities; and Executive of the Canadian Bioethics Society. Jeff has received many research and education awards, including the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada President’s Award for the most significant contribution to the specialty; Western University’s Faculty Scholar’s Award for Innovation in Research and Education; and, for his plays promoting public engagement in health policy, Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music’s Music Excellence in Education Award, which recognizes the efforts of an outstanding educator who embraces the idea that the arts have a capacity to change the world. He was one of the first two obstetrician-gynaecologists inducted into the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Through all this, Jeff has maintained his clinical practice in hormone-dependent malignancy, pituitary tumours, and reproductive endocrinology.

Jeff Nisker's profile page