FemInEM, in partnership with Medelita, has created our first awards recognizing outstanding female residents in emergency medicine: The Right Fit HIPster Awards.
Inspired by Medelita’s H.I.P. (Honoring Inspiring Professionals) program, we sought applications from female emergency medicine residents. We asked potential HIPster awardees to tell us about a problem affecting physicians, patients or their communities that they identified and implemented a project to address. We are delighted to say we had nearly 50 extraordinary women apply and we were blown away by their incredible applications!
Meet these amazing honorable mentionees!
Sara Andrabi, MD
Dr. Andrabi received her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine and is a current Chief Resident at Baylor College of Medicine. She has worked on numerous impressive projects. Most recently, Dr. Andrabi recognized that success of academic medicine and the ability to train future physicians are intrinsically linked with the success of female faculty as they now represent half of the medical student body and nearly half of physicians. She is working to create FEM@BCM: Females Engaged in Medicine at BCM to provide an avenue for female physician mentoring, engagement, collaboration, innovation, and leadership development.
Brittany Arnold, MD
Dr. Arnold received her medical degree from Oregon Health and Science University and is a current second year resident at Oregon Health and Science University. After struggling through what at times felt like an overwhelming resident match process, Dr. Arnold has created a structured year-long near-peer advising program, pairing EM residents with third and fourth year medical students. Through strategically-timed meetings students guided through their clinical rotations and match experience by an empathetic resident to answer questions, provide support, and give educated advice about preforming well clinically. She plans to evaluate the impact of this program through a four-year cross sectional survey study.
Stephanie Brenman, MD
Dr. Brenman received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and is a current fourth year resident at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center / Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. After struggling with a difficult airway complicated by scattered airway equipment, Dr. Brenman implemented a centralized, mobile airway cart that includes all the necessary and back up equipment. She has evaluated her project with surveys of attending and resident physicians both before and after the implementation of the new cart. She has since presented this data at the Western Regional SAEM conference in hopes of disseminating this information to other hospitals that may have had similar issues.
Bonnie Brown, DO
Dr. Brown received her doctor of osteopathic medicine at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine and is a current Chief Resident in the Combined Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine Residency at SUNY Downstate/Kings County Hospital Center. Early in her residency, Dr. Brown noticed that residents were not involved in the efforts to improve patient safety or operational changes within her hospitals and felt that there was a huge disconnect. In an attempt to diminish this gap, she co-founded a Housestaff Patient Safety and Quality Council as a means to increase resident involvement in QI projects and patient safety initiatives. Additionally, she developed Housestaff Handbook mobile application that incorporates into a single place the policies and procedures and contact information of her two institutions as well as information designed to increase housestaff involvement in QI efforts.
Corrielle Caldwell, MD
Dr. Caldwell received her medical degree from Rush Medical College and is a current third year resident at Lincoln Medical And Mental Health Center. Dr. Caldwell became concerned about a lack of social medicine awareness among her colleagues, despite their institution being located in a poor, urban neighborhood. She worried that despite their intellects and good intentions, she and her peers would remain ineffective clinicians if they could not relate to their patients or understand social determinants of health. To address this gap between the physician and the community, Dr. Caldwell arranged for a community tour for new interns during their orientation time. She continues to pursue social medicine initiatives with her peers with further community activism events in the works.
Kiersten Carter, MD
Dr. Carter received her medical degree at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and is a current Chief Resident at Stanford University/Kaiser Permanente. Dr. Carter has worked to develop a curriculum which aims to enhance the delivery of content to more effectively target various learning styles to both improve resident education and patient care. She performed a needs-analysis of recent graduates identifying areas of perceived knowledge and procedural weakness. She then created varying education experiences ranging from tabletop exercises about EKG-reading efficiency and antibiotics, to vascular access and pig head labs for ocular foreign body removal and lateral canthotomy.
Di Coneybeare, MD
Dr. Coneybeare received her medical degree from Stony Brook University and is a current Chief Resident at NYU Medical Center/Bellevue Hospital. Tasked with introducing the important, and at times daunting, world of ultrasound to EM interns, Dr. Coneybeare sought feedback from prior instructors on the successes and failures or previous education attempts. She then designed a more interactive and hands-on ultrasound curriculum, implemented in the A-and-Q style of Jeopardy. Learners were provided flipped-classroom resources prior to each session and actively engaged in a more fun and successful learning experience.
Heidi Dallara, MD
Dr. Dallara received her medical degree from State University of New York – Downstate College of Medicine and is a current fourth year resident at NYU Medical Center/Bellevue Hospital. Recognizing the burden of drug abuse on emergency departments and the communities they serve, Dr. Dallara helped design and create six, 40-minute lessons that offer an alternative to traditional substance abuse programs. Prevention and Education Partnership’s Novel Drugs of Abuse curriculum, PEP Talks, is expertly tailored to engage young adults in meaningful conversations about drug abuse. Delivered by Emergency Medicine attendings, residents, and medical students (“educators”), PEP Talks is an innovative program designed to equip adolescents (“learners”) with the tools to combat this pervasive public health dilemma.