What's New at NYP Emergency!

We in the NewYork-Presbyterian Emergency Medicine Residency are active outside of the ED nationally, internationally and in our local community.

At the National Level, we have faculty and resident representation on several levels and in different organizations.

Jeremy Sperling, MD, Assistant Residency Program Director and Cornell Attending, was one of ten recipients of the 2009 ACEP National Faculty Teaching Award. Dr. Sperling is an outstanding resident advocate and extremely passionate about resident and medical student education, and it came as no surprise to the residency that he won this award. Dr. Sperling also presented a novel approach to first responder education in medical school at the Innovations in Education Forum at 2009's SAEM Annual Meeting.

Jeremy Simon, MD, PhD, Columbia Attending, was elected chair of the SAEM Ethics Committee. Dr. Simon was also made a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, as well as a book review editor of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. In recent years, he has been an invited lecturer and grand rounds speaker on ethics and the philosophy of medicine at conferences across the US, and internationally in England and the Netherlands.

Dean Straff, MD, Cornell Attending and one of our former Chief Residents, was appointed to the national SAEM CORD Collaborative Task Force.

Satchit Balsari, MD, MPH, Cornell Attending and one of our former Chief Residents, was elected a fellow at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health & Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, as well as a fellow of the Asia Society.

Jay Lemery, Cornell Attending and Wilderness Medicine Course Director, formerly the Secretary of the Wilderness Medical Society, has now been elected Treasurer of the Society. In recognition of his exemplary dedication to wilderness medicine, Dr. Lemery was awarded the Ball Award by the Wilderness Medical Society, which is given to an individual who exemplifies the mission of the Society and is a strong advocate of the Society and outdoor health safety. Dr. Lemery was also recently made a fellow at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health & Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, and was elected as a Member on the Council on Foreign Relations. As if that wasn't enough, Dr. Lemery was recently chosen by JetBlue as one of six representatives in their new advertising campaign, "True People with True Passions". Look out for his face on the New York City subway system or in JFK's Terminal 5!

Kiran Pandit, MD, MPH, Columbia Attending, was elected to the Clerkship Directors in Emergency Medicine Third-Year Clerkship Curriculum Committee, as well as the Wilderness Medicine Society Education Committee, for which she coordinates the development of a nationally-standardized wilderness medicine student rotation.

Anne Hoffmann, Residency Manager, recently received the Inaugural ACGME Program Coordinator Excellence Award, in recognition of her tireless dedication to the residency program. This is the first year that the award has been given, and is only given to five program coordinators across all medical specialties.

Brenna Farmer, MD, Cornell Attending, sits on both the Education Committee and the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee for the American College of Medical Toxicology. Dr. Farmer has a number of funded research studies underway, including a study of agents of opportunity in the healthcare setting funded by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center and the US Army, and a study on emergency department patient knowledge of acetaminophen.

Jen Prosser, MD, Cornell Attending, has secured a Junior Investigator Grant from the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology to undertake research on cocaine toxicity.

Flavio Gaudio, MD, Cornell Attending, has been an invited lecturer on wilderness medicine on a number of recent occasions, including at the Wilderness Medical Society National Conference in 2009 and the Mid-Atlantic Medical Student Conference in Wilderness Medicine in 2010. Dr. Gaudio also made national headlines as the attending of record on a case of extraordinary successful resuscitation from cardiac arrest, "Back from the dead: the Joe Tiralosi story", and was featured on CNN Headline News and CBS News.

Peter Steel, MD, MA, MBBS, Cornell Attending and former Chief Resident, one of our Chief Residents, served as the New York State ACEP Resident Committee Chair for 2009-2010. Mary Mulcare, MD, PGY4, was elected Vice-Chair of the Committee for the 2010-2011 year. Dr. Mulcare created and presented the annual Jeopardy session for junior residents at the most recent NYACEP/EMRA Career Day Conference.

A number of residents and faculty members presented research at the SAEM 2009 Annual Meeting. Jacqueline Mahal, Cornell Attending and former Chief Resident, presented three posters on the use of illness severity scores in severe sepsis and septic shock. Matt O'Neill, MD, Cornell Attending and former Chief Resident, presented a poster on the epidemiology of multidrug overdose. David Anthony, MD, MPH, Cornell Attending and former Chief Resident, presented a poster on EMcounter, a novel epidemiological tool being used to collect data on medical emergencies in India. He was also asked to present the project in an oral presentation at the International Emergency Medicine Research Forum. Derek Richardson, MD, PGY4, presented a novel approach to teaching thoracentesis at the Innovations in Education forum with his well-received demonstration, "The Thanksgiving Turkey Tap".

Inho Kim, MD, PGY3 was appointed to the SAEM Ethics Committee. As an intern, Dr. Kim also competed in the SAEM CPC competition at the 2010 Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ. He was accompanied by the EM Chief Residents as well as the entire PGY2 class under an initiative that was begun two years ago and has had much success in inspiring academic discourse and research projects amongst the second-year residents.

Internationally, our residents and faculty travel to four continents where they are true ambassadors of our department and medical specialty.

Under the guidance of Steering Committee members Drs. Satchit Balsari, Wallace Carter, Alexis Halpern, Jay Lemery, Jacqueline Mahal, Kiran Pandit, Anjali Pant, Jonathan St. George, Dean Straff, and Chris Tedeschi, this spring saw the launch of the Global Emergency Medicine Program, a formal consolidation of much of the residency-level international efforts that have been built in recent years. The Program serves as a platform to advance the disciplines of clinical emergency medicine, disaster preparedness and humanitarian response in a global context. For more information please visit www.globalemergencymedicine.org.

Haiti: The 2010 earthquake relief effort in Haiti saw an enormous response from NYP faculty and residents. Rapid assessment and medical response teams arrived Port-au-Prince in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, including attendings Drs. Satchit Balsari, Sol Kuah, and Jay Lemery, and international emergency medicine fellows Drs. Mary Choi, Jeff Kinyon, Jen Schwieger, and Ayman Yassa. In the following months, a total of seven medical teams were dispatched from NYP to serve at the Disaster Recovery Center in Fond Parisien, near the Haiti-Dominican Republic border. In a period of four months, over two thousand survivors of the earthquake were treated at the facility. NYP attendings, including Drs. Satchit Balsari, Juliet Caldwell, Alexis Halpern, Jay Lemery, Jacqueline Mahal, Kiran Pandit, Jen Prosser, Jonathan St. George, Chris Tedeschi, and Michael Vortmann, and residents Drs. Sam Gerson and Reid Orth, served in a clinical capacity, as well as organizing staffing and public health initiatives for the Center.

The Middle East: In the fall of 2009, a team of NYP physicians, including attendings Drs. Satchit Balsari, Brenna Farmer, Hanson Hsu, Jen Prosser, Rahul Sharma, and Michael Vortmann, and resident Dr. David Anthony, and led by Cornell Attending and then-Chief Resident Dr. Hina Ghory, organized a well-received three-day Trauma Training Course for residents, attending physicians, and paramedics at Rashid Hospital, home to the region’s busiest emergency department and one of the world’s largest trauma centers. For 2010, the course has been expanded to include training in acute medical emergencies and a first responder course for medical students, and will be convened in Doha at the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar. NYP physicians lecturing at the course include attendings Drs. Satchit Balsari, Betty Chang, Jay Lemery, Jeremy Sperling, Sasha Tichter, and Michael Vortmann, and residents Drs. David Anthony and Rana Biary.

Guatemala: The Pop Wuj clinic project is a collective effort between New York Presbyterian Hospital's Emergency Department, a thriving socially-minded Spanish language school in Quetzaltenango, and the nonprofit organization Todos Juntos. The project was started in 2006 by current Cornell attending and former resident Dr. Jonathan St. George, after raising funds to secure and renovate an unused space next to the Pop Wuj Spanish Language School, and is now a fully sustainable clinic providing care for thousands of patients in the surrounding villages. NYP EM faculty, residents, and nurses travel to the clinic on annual medical missions to help provide care and resources. For more info visit the website: http://www.popwujclinic.org/

Ghana: Dr. Rachel Moresky, MD, MPH, Columbia Attending and Coordinator of the International EM Fellowship, continues to expand the project "Strengthening Health Systems - Improving Patient Care at the Ghana District Hospital" under a grant from the GE Foundation. US-trained EPs work at the district level hospitals in Ghana to provide bedside and didactic training, health systems process improvement and direct clinical service delivery. A number of residents have traveled to Ghana under the grant, including Lauren Health, MD, PGY4.

Montenegro: For the last 3 years, in a project led by Dr Allan Ross of the Children's Hospital of New York (CHONY) Emergency Department, several NYP-Columbia Campus attendings (Drs. Robert Bristow, Veronica Hlibczuk, Chris Ingram, and Kiran Pandit) have joined forces with our pediatric colleagues to provide training in trauma management and medical emergencies in Ulcinj, Montenegro.

India: NYP faculty and residents continue to enjoy a robust and close relationship with a number of institutions in India. Ongoing initiatives include: EMS training, under the direction of Residency Director Dr. Wallace Carter and Columbia Attending Dr. Heidi Cordi; political advocacy and governmental-level coordination of resources, as well as consultation on the development of local emergency medicine residencies and curricula by Cornell Attending and former Chief Resident Dr. Satchit Balsari; the screening of a documentary film on the state of prehospital care in Mumbai for municipal officials, media, and political advocates, produced and directed by Columbia Attending Dr. Chris Tedeschi; and large-scale epidemiological research via the award-winning Project EMcounter, coordinated by Chief Resident Dr. David Anthony.

Global Health Education for Medical Providers: Attendings Drs. Satchit Balsari and Anjali Pant, Chief Resident Dr. David Anthony, and resident alumnus Dr. John Arbo, Class of 2010, are organizing the Global Health Emergencies Course, a two-week training course open to medical professionals in the U.S. and intended to provie them with the training required to effectively participate in global health work. The course has recruited a number of internationally-renowned speakers and is planned for February 2011.

Our residents and faculty participate actively in our hospitals and in our community.

Medical Toxicology Service: With the support of Dr. Neal Flomenbaum, MD, Physician-in-Chief, Cornell Campus, 2009-2010 saw the creation of the Medical Toxicology Consultation Service at NYP-Cornell, led by Cornell Attendings Rama Rao, MD, FACMT, Brenna Farmer MD, and Jen Prosser MD. The service provides 24/7 consultation on toxicological issues for the Cornell emergency department and medical ICU.

Kiran Pandit, MD, MPH, Columbia Attending, serves on the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Major Clinical Year Curriculum Committee and Evaluation Committee.

Derek Richardson, MD, is currently collaborating with the New York City Department of Health Bureau of Communicable Diseases to find trends in emergency department visits in New York City since 2003.

In her free time, Mary Mulcare, MD, PGY4 and her husband teach sexual education and puberty issues to fifth and sixth graders in Connecticut.

Sam Gerson, MD was recognized for his commitment to patient care and resident education by being elected as one of NYP’s Employees of the Month for June 2010.

NYP Quality Housestaff Committee: Mary Mulcare, MD, PGY4, Nick Connors, MD, PGY4, Rana Biary, MD, PGY4, Joyce Quo, MD, PGY3, and Steve Garcia, MD, PGY2, participate on this hospital-wide committee that meets monthly. The committee’s mission is to include housestaff input in quality efforts in all areas of the hospital.

NYP Graduate Medical Education Committee: Ryan Bayley, MD, EMT-P, PGY4, Jane Kim, MD, PGY4, Edozie Akunyili, MD, PGY3, and Debbie Yi, MD, PGY3, serve on the GME Committee which discusses issues relating to resident education during monthly meetings at both campuses.

Camp Amerikids: In Upstate New York, Camp Amerikids provides children with HIV/AIDS an opportunity to have a true summer camp experience. The camp medical directors, Dr. Dean Straff, MD, one of our former Chief Residents, serves as medical director of the camp, and was joined in the infirmary by Jen Kherani, MD, PGY3, in August 2010.