January Newsletter - 2020 New Year's Greetings!
Happy New Year, friends! I hope that your year is off to a joyful start.
There has been such excitement surrounding 2020 that I know many people have felt pressure to start the new decade with big, sweeping changes to their lives. I want to tell you that every day— today, tomorrow, mid-February, whenever— is an opportunity to start fresh. If you are ready for new beginnings now, I applaud and support you. If you are in a quieter season of life, that’s beautiful, too.
"As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning." Criss Jami
I wish each of you happiness and health in the coming year. Thank you for sharing this space with me.
Spotlight On Dr. Carol Pak-Teng
It is my honor to begin the new year by sharing the work of Dr. Carol Pak-Teng, an inspiring emergency medicine physician practicing in Jersey City, New Jersey.
In addition to her clinical practice, Dr. Pak-Teng is a vocal advocate for addressing the systemic problems that can make practicing medicine so perilous for the mental health of physicians.
In February 2019, the New York Post featured her story and shared the realities of burnout as a medical professional and the circumstances that led to a major depressive episode.
“In my healing process, I very cautiously starting stepping my foot out and talking about things openly and honestly. I really felt a call to action when people began to reach out to me with their own stories,” she says. “I was initially hesitant to come out nationally in one of the biggest publications talking about physician suicide. But then I thought, if I— who am an open book— if I don’t do this, who else will?” Since then, she has shared her passion for physician suicide prevention and continues to be vocal about the issues faced by healthcare professionals. “At the core are systemic problems,” she says. “Residents have schedules that attendings say, ‘I couldn’t be an attending safely with those hours.’ There’s an obvious problem here.”
Recently, Dr. Pak-Teng founded APA EMerge, a company that will launch later this spring. Through APA EMerge, Dr. Pak-Teng hopes to provide a career accelerator for Asian Pacific American physicians through community, building a network that will help Asian-American physicians find their way into the leadership pipeline.
“Asian Americans are the least likely group to be promoted— in any industry,” she says. “There is a huge disparity between the number of Asian American physicians and the number of Asian American physicians in leadership roles. Ultimately my goals are to give a voice to the invisible minority in the room, and to address our underrepresentation in leadership.”
The emergency medicine community is so lucky to have Dr. Pak-Teng as an advocate and leader. I can’t wait to share more about APA EMerge and Dr. Pak-Teng’s ongoing work in the spring. Follow Dr. Pak-Teng and APA EMerge on Twitter!
Around the Web
Black Med Students At Former Slave Quarters Say 'This Is About Resiliency'
"I don't think as a kid I ever saw a minority physician," says Russell J. Ledet.
Ledet is a second-year medical student in the M.D./MBA program at the Tulane University School of Medicine, and he's African American. Last weekend he organized a trip to Whitney Plantation, now a museum in Edgard, La., for fellow members of the Tulane chapter of the Student National Medical Association, a student-run organization that supports black medical students.
A tweeted photo of 15 African American medical students posing in front of former slave quarters — wearing the short white coats that symbolize their status as doctors in training — has racked up more than 70,000 views and nearly 17,000 retweets in a matter of days.
The Art of Dying
I got the preliminary word from my doctor by phone while driving alone upstate from the city to join my wife, Brooke, at our country place. After the call, I found myself overwhelmed by the beauty of the passing late-August land. At mile eighty-one of the New York State Thruway, the gray silhouettes of the Catskills come into view, perfectly framed and proportioned. How many times had I seen and loved the sight? How many more times would I? I thought of Thomas Cole’s paintings, from another angle, of those very old, worn mountains, brooding on something until the extinction of matter.
The Majority of U.S. Medical Students Are Women, New Data Show
Women comprise the majority of enrolled U.S. medical students for the first time, according to 2019 data released today by the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges). This progress builds on the milestone reached in 2017, when, for the first time, women comprised the majority of first-year medical students.
Where to Find Me
I’m excited to spend the end of this cold month in Maui with Northwest Seminars presenting on topics in Emergency Medicine from January 27th to the 31st.
Even better than Hawaii is the chance to co-present with friends, Gabrielle A. Jacquet, MD, MPH, FACEP, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and Svetlana Zakharchenko, DO, RDMS, Director of Emergency Ultrasound Division at Hackensack Meridian Health in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Let’s work together in 2020!
I love sharing tools to help Emergency Departments and physicians thrive.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions about my ED Consulting Services or if you’d like to discuss having me speak at your event or to your organization!
May you all be as bold in the coming year as my niece's puppy on Christmas Eve.