Losing one’s voice as a physician

Total laryngectomy permanently deprives patients of their vocal apparatus. While the communicative consequences of voice loss have been widely discussed, its implications for professional identity remain underexplored when the patient is a practising physician. This paper presents an autoethnographic account of a physician who returned to clinical work after total laryngectomy, relying on text-to-speech technologies, written communication and embodied interaction.Although artificial voice and digital tools enabled effective informational exchange, they did not fully restore a sense of authentic medical practice. The absence of one's own voice generated a persistent unease, experienced as a form of self-alienation when a technologically mediated self was presented as the speaking physician. This tension became particularly salient in one-to-many settings such as public lectures, where vocal authority traditionally underpins professional legitimacy.In everyday clinical practice, additional compensatory strategies emerged. Despite the adequacy of mediated communication, face-to-face encounters were intentionally maintained, allowing tacit modes of collaboration to develop organically. Drawing on an ethnomethodological perspective, these practices are interpreted as the formation of 'our ways' of working together-locally produced methods sustained through bodily co-presence rather than formal protocols.Although artificial voice and digital tools enabled effective informational exchange, they did not fully restore a sense of authentic medical practice. The absence of one's own voice generated a persistent unease, experienced as a form of self-alienation when a technologically mediated self was presented as the speaking physician. This tension became particularly salient in one-to-many settings, such as public lectures, where vocal authority traditionally underpins professional legitimacy.