Hello everyone:
We're celebrating Easter in Philadelphia this weekend. We pulled into the city yesterday afternoon, creeping through Center City traffic to retrieve Isabella from an art gallery where she’s interning. Finding parking near the gallery seemed as unlikely as the possibility that the sun would break through the clouds overhead.
By a cosmic coincidence, my daughter, Gabrielle, and I are simultaneously immersed in the "mindset" literature. I just read “Changing Mindsets to Enhance Treatment Effectiveness” in JAMA by Alia Crum and Barry Zuckerman. Gabrielle just read "You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life" by Jen Sincero. As we crawled along, Gabrielle guaranteed that with the right mindset, we’d find parking.
As you may recall, Dana Dunne was recently elevated to Associate Chair for Education in the Department of Medicine. In her new role, she will extend her efforts to teach the department's teachers. When this academic year ends, she will step down as Associate Program Director, but thankfully she will remain Core Faculty and Director of the 3rd year Clerkship. Dana's coming departure challenged us to find replacements, and our search quickly led us to three magnificent faculty who will join us in June: Manisha Juthani-Mehta, Alfred Lee, and Christopher Sankey.
Manisha currently serves and will continue to serve as Director of the Yale Infectious Diseases Fellowship. She earned her MD at Cornell in 1998 and completed residency at New York Hospital before spending a Chief year at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Manisha completed fellowship at Yale and joined faculty in 2005, rising to Associate Professor in 2012. She is an accomplished researcher, studying antibiotic stewardship and infections in the elderly. She made a splash recently with an article in JAMA on the failure of cranberry capsules to prevent bacteriuria in older women. Manisha is also a gifted writer, and I'd encourage you to read her Boston Globe Op-Ed on medical error. Manisha will help mentor residents applying to fellowship and will serve as liaison to Yale’s fellowship programs. This summer she will become the advisor to half of Dana's residents.
Alfred is no stranger to anyone and currently serves as Chief of the Duffy Firm. Alfred earned his PhD in Immunobiology at Yale in 2003 and his MD in 2004. He completed his residency and Chief Residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital and his fellowship in Hematology-Oncology at Dana-Farber before returning to Yale in 2011. Alfred has won almost every teaching award the department and school offer, including the Traditional Residency's Faculty Teacher-of-the-Year Award (2012), the Heme-Onc Fellowship’s David C. Fischer Award for Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring of Fellows (2012 and 2015), the Yale School of Medicine's Charles W. Bohmfalk Prize for Teaching in the Basic Sciences (2016), and, most recently, the school's Leah Lowenstein Award. Alfred has a clinical interest in clotting disorders and will continue to serve as Co-Director of our Program Evaluation Committee (PEC). Alfred will become advisor to the other half of Dana's residents.
Chris Sankey also needs no introduction. He graduated magna cum laude from the Ohio State University College of Medicine in 2002 and was recruited to Yale where he served as resident and Chief Resident. Chris is a member of our General Internal Medicine Section and has been a Hospitalist at Yale-New Haven since 2006. He is a stalwart of our Academic Hospitalist Program. Chris attends on the teaching service for several months each year, has directed hospital's Rapid Response Team, and has served as faculty liaison to the Beeson Beat since its inception. Chris studies clinical deterioration among medical inpatients and is currently creating a new Hospital Medicine elective. He has a special interest in fostering excellence in residents' oral and written presentations. Chris was awarded the Traditional Residency's Faculty Teacher-of-the-Year Award in 2014. At the start of the next academic year, he will become Associate Director of the Internal Medicine Clerkship and advisor to our residency's physician scientist trainees.
We're incredibly fortunate to have such talented faculty joining program leadership, moving seamlessly into the spot made available by Dana's well-deserved promotion.
We're incredibly fortunate to have such talented faculty joining program leadership, moving seamlessly into the spot made available by Dana's well-deserved promotion. I couldn't help reflecting on our good fortune, and the power of positive mindset, as a parking spot suddenly opened for us on a crowded Philadelphia street, just steps from Isabella's art gallery.
Enjoy your sunny Easter Sunday everyone,
Mark
PS- Here's a link to a fantastic TED talk on mindset by Alia Crum: https://youtu.be/0tqq66zwa7g
M