Howard Carter taught literature at Eckerd College for many years, with visiting professorships at St. Johns University, Georgetown, Emory, the University of Montana, and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

He has been a pastoral care volunteer in an ER/Trauma Center, a music visitor in a large hospital, a licensed massage therapist for cancer patients, and a certified Qi Gong therapist. 

His books include In Peril:  All People, All Life, Our Earth; In Prospect: Better HealthCare & Medicine; Clowns and Jokers Can Heal Us: Comedy and Medicine; First Cut: A Season in the Human Anatomy Lab; Our Human Hearts: A Medical and Cultural Journey, and, co-authored, Rising from the Flames: The Experience of the Severely Burned. His poems have appeared in NEJM, JAMA, Hiram Review, Mediphors, The Florida Review, The Pharos, Humane Medicine, Journal of Medical Humanities, The Healing Muse, Oberon, etc., and his short fiction in The Healing Muse, Journal of Florida Medical Association, The Thomas Wolfe Review, Ars Medica, and The Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.