CENTRAL FLORIDA EM RESIDENCY PROGRAM UPDATES
Orlando Health By Gregory Black, MD, PGY-2, Brody Hingst, MD, PGY-2 & John Atiyeh, MD, PGY-3
Hello from Orlando! We hope that everyone is staying healthy and safe. As we begin our summer, we all take a collective sigh of frustration for what has been an incredibly difficult year thus far. We are facing the worst global pandemic of our lifetimes and continue to be diligent and cautious as COVID-19 still remains prevalent in our community. Additionally, we witnessed yet another heinous act of police brutality against our Black community followed by immediate nationwide outrage and protests calling for change to our broken system. Orlando Health has always strived to be a loving and unified family. In the essence of these ideals, the EM residency organized a “Healthcare Workers for Black Lives” protest in the lobby of the hospital where
we knelt in honor of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. We heard many wonderful speeches from our amazing colleagues about inequality in our country and how we can continue the fight for equality moving forward. We are so proud of our residents, Drs. Beaulah Castor, Innocent Akujuobi and Agi Gaetig, for organizing this and bringing us together with love and support. The conversation will continue moving forward at Orlando Health with focus groups and meeting spaces for how we can help fight inequality in our community. Please remember that we have a responsibility as leaders in our community to seek reform for the systemic racism that exists in every facet of our nation, including healthcare. And we have a responsibility to our patients to look internally and identify our own internal
biases and overcome them. If you have not done so already, please find out who your local and national representatives are and message them about making change, and most importantly, VOTE. Primary elections are on August 18 and the Florida general election is November 3. We want to close by saying thank you to all of our graduating thirdyear residents. Thank you so much for all of your teaching and wisdom. You guys are all awesome and we are going to miss you so much! And finally, we are so excited to welcome our entire new intern class! July 1 couldn’t come soon enough. Don’t forget to keep living like Sal! ■
AdventHealth East Orlando By Tyler Mills, MD, PGY-1 Hello again from all your EM friends at AdventHealth East Orlando. It has been an eventful academic year full of many exciting challenges and changes. We congratulate Drs. Molins, Gue and Tomecsek on their new positions, and we look forward to meeting our new assistant program director, whose move was delayed by the coronavirus— congratulations, Dr. Little! The 2019-2020 academic year will be a memorable one for EM programs everywhere, and our program is no exception. The interns showed continuous growth in their new roles and adapted well to the additional challenges of training during a pandemic. On the research front, interns made significant contributions as well. Dr. Duan has already completed his first project on palliative care 28
consults in the ED and is waiting to publish. Dr. Ray seeks to maximize engagement and capitalize on the popularity of our “jeopardy board review.” He is awaiting approval to begin his project on “gamification” of EM education. We are eager to apply his findings so we can incorporate more competitive elements into the weekly conference. Second-years Dr. Muniz and Dr. Lawyer have joined forces to create tutorial videos for newcomers to the ED. The instructional videos—which include topics like documentation and order sets— will help interns and rotators hit the ground running. Senior resident Dr. Mays wrote a review article on frostbite and hypothermia and was paid for her work. It was another record year for applicants and interviews. We are excited EMpulse Summer 2020
for the new interns to start so we can get to know them, but we are sad that this time of year also means saying goodbye to our third year class. They survived three hurricane seasons and a global pandemic to get to this point. They graduated in style (via Zoom) with their legacy secure. They were a strong class academically and clinically across the board, but they were also well-liked. They were a nursing favorite and built close friendships with their intern class. We will miss seeing all their faces everyday, but find solace in the fact that most are staying nearby. Drs. Marin, Parrish and Kim will be staying in the Advent Family and accepted positions at nearby campuses. Dr. Ramadan, one of our chiefs, won’t be too far from home after he moves his young family to Jacksonville. ■
