Jessica Zitter is a documentary filmmaker, writer, physician, and founder of Reel Medicine Media, a non-profit devoted to using story to transform and humanize medical culture.
Dr. Zitter is the primary featured subject and a member of the team that created the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary Extremis (2016). She went on to direct and produce the award-winning documentary Caregiver: A Love Story (2020), which examines the growing crisis of family caregiver burden in the United States. Her third documentary, The Chaplain and the Doctor (2025) explores the transformative relationship between a hospital chaplain and a physician challenging the fragmented clinical approach to patient care.
Dr. Zitter’s book, Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life (2017), describes her evolution from a doctor focused on extending life at all costs to one more patient-centered and humanistic.
Her essays and articles have appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, the Journal of the American Medical Association, among others. She has also been featured on “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, “The Doctors,” “Doctor Oz,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” and others.
Recently named one of Next Avenue’s "Influencers in Aging," Dr. Zitter practices the unusual combination of critical care and palliative care in Oakland, California.
