TSMD May Newsletter - What Courage Looks Like
May Greetings
On March 11th, 2020, Kaila Colbin tweeted the following: “Here is the thing to understand about flattening the curve. It only works if we take necessary measures before they seem necessary. And if it works, people will think we overreacted. We have to be willing to look like we overreacted.”
The tweet now seems prophetic as states like Georgia point to lower-than-projected infection rates and begin reopening businesses such as tattoo parlors and hair salons—in spite of dire warnings from health experts. To date, there have been over 900,000 diagnosed cases in the United States. And this number will only climb unless we continue to diligently practice social distancing.
As we work toward a vaccine and do our best to learn more about how coronavirus works, staying at home is the most significant act of support you can offer to physicians and scientists at this fraught moment in time.
If you are not an essential worker and you have the economic privilege to avoid work that would take you outside the home, please listen to the physicians all over this country pleading for people to stay inside. To be courageous at this moment is as simple as staying home or, when you must go out, wearing a mask or face-covering in public spaces. Please do your part to help us keep your neighbors and families safe.
Spotlight on Dr. Adaira Landry
Each month, I spotlight the work of emergency physicians doing exceptional and important work around the country. This month, it is my great honor to feature the work of the wonderful Dr. Adaira Landry.
Dr. Landry is currently an Assistant Residency Director for the Harvard Emergency Medicine Residency. She is also the Director of the Ultrasound Fellowship for the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. After studying Molecular Cell Biology and African American Studies at UC Berkeley, Dr. Landry graduated from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and completed her emergency medicine residency at NYU after serving as chief resident in her final year. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Landry completed an Ultrasound Fellowship and earned her MEd with a focus on Technology, Innovation, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Last year, Dr. Landry was the recipient of the national Rising Star award from the Academic Association of Women Emergency Physicians.
Dr. Landry’s primary interests include increasing diversity and inclusion in medicine and that, she says, begins with mentorship.
In her final year of medical school, Dr. Landry was mentored by Dr. Uche Blackstock, a relationship she has found invaluable to her career. “Having my first mentor be a female African American physician was transformative,” she says. “Dr. Blackstock was incredibly engaged and supportive. To have someone I wanted to emulate showing me the way felt like winning the lotto.” It felt that way for a good reason. Black female doctors, she notes, make up only 2% of America’s physicians.
In residency at NYU, Dr. Landry picked up additional mentors like Drs. Dan Egan, Dara Kass, Anand Swaminathan, and Michelle Lin. “I was able to bring incredible physicians into my life that I’ve been fortunate to learn from,” she says.
It was through these experiences that Dr. Landry began to recognize the importance of mentorship. It’s something she strives to keep in mind as the Assistant Residency Director for Harvard’s Emergency Medicine Residency.
“My best strategy,” she says, “is assuring my mentees that they deserve the chance to achieve their goals. It's easy to feel that others deserve success, but I don't. I also try to spend my time and energy offering advice with detailed strategic planning for their career. That’s in regard to their professional relationships, which projects to pursue, and finding their niche.”
Learning the game of mentorship, she says, can accelerate physicians’ careers in incredible ways and can offer essential pathways to underrepresented minorities in medicine.
You can follow Dr. Landry on Twitter.
Around the Web
A Care Package for the Health Care Community
An offering of poetry, podcasts, and meditations to accompany a time of crisis. Pádraig Ó Tuama reads Leanne O’Sullivan’s poem, “Leaving Early,” and reflects on the various shapes of presence and love manifest by those caring for bodies and spirits in hospitals and clinics and ambulances. “Their life and their story is being wrapped into a story of care and they, too, deserve the same care that they’re giving.”
No One Is Supporting the Doctors
“Health-care systems in America do not support physicians and do not support the most vulnerable patients. Physicians are seen as upwardly mobile and willing to pay the price of unacceptably low residency pay and backbreaking work in order to do what they love. Patients without access to care are seen as unambitious—they lack insurance because they do not work. Hopefully this crisis opens the eyes of Americans to the plight of both groups.”
How Anthony Fauci Became America’s Doctor
“Americans have come to rely on Fauci’s authoritative presence. Perhaps not since the Vietnam era, when Walter Cronkite, the avuncular anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” was routinely described as the most trusted man in America, has the country depended so completely on one person to deliver a daily dose of plain talk. In one national poll, released last Thursday, seventy-eight percent of participants approved of Fauci’s performance. Only seven percent disapproved.”
Virtual Presentations
I was honored to speak with The Brigham and Women's/Massachusetts General Hospital Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency on April 14th. For their Didactic Conference Virtual Grand Rounds, I presented on the topic of Death in Restraints.
On April 15th, I spoke to the Cook County Health Emergency Medicine Program on Resilience for the Emergency Physician.
I presented on Developing your Personal Brand: Intentional Leadership in Times of Change on April 23rd as a guest lecturer for the Leadership Seminar Series for the International Fellowship in Clinical Simulation at the Neil and Elise Wallace STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation Brigham and Women's Hospital.
On May 6th, I’ll be presenting for Dell Children's Medical Center’s Pediatric Emergency Medicine Grand Rounds on the topic It's all about You, or It should be: Resilience for the Emergency Physician.
The Second Victims of Coronavirus
The outcomes for patients with COVID-19 are often unpredictable. And with an unprecedented number of people falling ill, it is unsurprising that some physicians are expressing feelings of hopelessness. And, tragically, we are losing healthcare workers to suicde.
In New York City, a rookie EMT with the New York City Fire Department John Mondello died recently after mentioning that he was struggling to cope with the coronavirus patients he was seeing. According to the New York Post, “The young EMT was on the Tactical Response Group running non-stop to areas with the busiest emergency call volume in the city.”
And just last week we lost Dr. Lorna Breen, the medical director of the emergency department at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in Manhattan, where she had been treating coronavirus patients.
There will be second victims of this virus and we must do our best to mitigate the damage. Check on the healthcare workers in your life. Check in on one another. If you are struggling, you are not alone. Please reach out for help.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-8255
Stay in Touch
Please let me know how you’re doing.
Sending love and strength.
Tracy
Scenes from this year’s Easter celebration with my family.