Betty Clark is an 80-year-old, African American chaplain on staff at The Wilma Chan Highland Hospital Campus, the level-one trauma center in Oakland, California. Jessica Zitter is a white Jewish physician who has been Betty’s colleague on the Palliative Care service for over a decade.
The two women are an unlikely team: chaplains and doctors do not usually pair up within the hierarchical and siloed halls of the hospital but the two women’s shared values and history overcome the forces that keep them apart, and they go on to do their best work together.
Filmed over seven years, the feature documentary follows filmmaker and physician Dr. Jessica Zitter and Alameda Health System Chaplain Betty Clark in their efforts to provide care to patients of the East Bay’s only Level I Trauma Center.
Filled with warmth and humor, this buddy film follows two unlikely allies working to bring curiosity, connection, and compassion to a broken healthcare system – one patient at a time.
