Margaret Chisolm, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins medical students spend one month of their education on a basic psychiatry clerkship. It was a medical student – and I consider students to be coworkers – who made, not just my day, but our entire psychiatry care team’s month.
By chance, Molly was the Hopkins medical student assigned to do her basic clerkship at Bayview with me in May. By luck, I was the attending physician. It was the best month of my long teaching career, due in no small part to the joy of learning that Molly brought to the entire team each day of that month.
In our month together, the unit was filled to capacity with a group of depressed and suicidal patients, the likes of which would have made T.S. Eliot revise his “April is the cruelest month” adage to “May…” in a heartbeat. In fact, May is the peak month for suicide worldwide in general populations (although April is a close second and the peak month for suicide among people with mood disorders).
Molly was undaunted by the despair in our patients hearts and was determined to bring a ray of hope to these darkest of souls. Through her radiant love and warmth, Molly offered empathic support and encouragement to a myriad of patients including an intellectually disabled adult man who had lost his caretaker mother and, therefore, his independence in one fell swoop; a young, opioid-dependent singer/songwriter who had given up the will to play music; and the owner of a failing business who had lost nearly all touch with reality. When the restaurant owner was transferred to Johns Hopkins Hospital for electroconvulsive therapy, Molly took it upon herself to pay her a visit on the other campus, more as a friendly face and out of personal concern than as a medical student.
Through the joy Molly brought to the unit, she not only provided excellent clinical care herself but she enabled the whole team to give such care as well. She was a role model and cheerleader for our entire psychiatry care team: social worker, occupational therapist, interns, Molly’s fellow medical student, and me. Molly’s consistently upbeat mood and unyielding enthusiasm was infectious, and encouraged our care team to give clinically excellent care to each of our patients during that otherwise dismal month of May.
Rachel Salas, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Donya is a respiratory therapist who is part of our team at the Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep. She always makes the time to make sure all patients are heard. I miss her when she is not in clinic! Donya is awesome!
Brittany is our patient service coordinator and is a wonderful asset to our team. She goes out of her way to make sure all patients are heard and are well cared for. We are so lucky to have Brittany represent us at the sleep center.
Panagis Galiatsatos, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
With our community outreach program, one of my colleagues, Nurse Gloria, came with me to a local school to talk about asthma. There was one family wanted to attend the talk, but didn’t speak English. Gloria sat them down and spoke about asthma in Spanish, guaranteeing them insight and knowledge around this disease.
We discovered the mother didn’t know how to use the inhaler. After Gloria taught her, the school told us that the child didn’t miss a day of school for asthma-related issues!
That’s medicine at its best!
