News Housestaff Recognition

March 2023 Kudos and Awards

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Thank you, residents and interns, for all you do for one another and for your patients. Though often under-appreciated, your work does not go unnoticed. 

Help us highlight the kindness, clinical judgement, resourcefulness, and work ethic.
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Nominate a resident/intern for Housestaff of the month or just share something good. 

Cosette Champion
Champion

March 2023 Inpatient Resident of the Month
Cosette Champion

“In the clinic, Dr. Champion was caring for a patient with recurrent bacteremia who had left the hospital multiple times before prior to completing treatment. The patient was off antibiotics and having infectious symptoms again. With multiple social determinates preventing the patient from going to the hospital, Dr. Champion coordinated care with the Infectious Disease team to expedite the best alternative treatments including PO antibiotics.”

“During a crazy long call day when I was on firm, Cosette was fourth night float. She graciously helped us admit a patient while also managing all of the cross-cover tasks. She did not have any hesitation to help despite the fact that she had a lot of work to do on her own. She did a fabulous job admitting the patient and had a great attitude.”

Gregg Fox
Fox

March 2023 Inpatient Intern of the Month
Gregg Fox

“I worked with Greg in the MICU recently, where he excelled. We had a particularly tough panel of patients that alternated between medically complex and socio-economically challenging, and he navigated both situations in a way that would have impressed me even if he were a senior resident.”

All that being said, there is one situation in particular for which he deserves recognition. We had a patient in the ICU who was in a bad situation, and for whom the family required a great deal of communication and explanation of the overall prognosis and course of care. Greg developed an amazing rapport with this family, and became an invaluable intermediary between the ICU team and the next of kin. He went above and beyond, even talking to the family on his day off to help facilitate communication and clarify the goals of care in this very difficult case. I was impressed by his devotion to the patient and ensuring their comfort in this very difficult case.

“Outstanding performance in patient care and family communication.”

Gavin Hall
Hall

March 2023 Outpatient Resident of the Month
Gavin Hall

“Exemplary care of a PCMC patient despite innumerable challenges. Dr. Hall spent a great deal of time and effort supporting a frail cognitively challenged patient who had just been discharged after a VERY complicated admission where long term planning had been of particular concern. This was still the case when Dr. Hall saw the patient in the PCMC and was further confounded by inability to reach family members. Despite this Dr. Hall addressed the patients problems in a clinically sound manner and did not let the complexity ruffle his feathers.”

Kudos

VA Firm Residents
Kudos to everyone on VA firm who handled a record number of overflow patients last week that bent or broke a lot of our usual patient distribution rules. It was a rough call cycle with really high censuses, and your hard work was appreciated!
Francisco Novoa
Francisco Novoa
I want to give Francisco a shoutout for always being an engaged and active participant in resident report. He makes the effort to attend regularly and consistently participates with helpful comments. Not only does this help me as the facilitator, but having worked with Francisco on firm I know this also is reflective of the diligence and curiosity he brings to patient care.
Jacques Halabi
Jacques Halabi
Jacques has a great fund of knowledge. While working on firm together, he recognized, diagnosed, and treated TRALI despite having never seen it before. He makes quick management decisions on complex patients with ease and is a great teacher and leader.
Ben Hoemann
Ben Hoemann
Ben saw one of my patients in the COH that was rescheduled to his clinic. This visit was very complicated and involved non-standard testing/assessment along with detailed paperwork and coordination with other specialists and attendings. He was super thorough and attentive and I really appreciated this to help get my patient what they need in a timely manner.
Margery Gang
Margery Gang
Margery provided outstanding leadership for our team this past month in dealing with very complicated patients. Our team list consistently ran high, but she created a positive and supportive work environment for the interns w/her professionalism, organizational skills, and calm demeanor. She not only effectively managed medically complex, acutely ill heart failure patients (of whom several required ICU transfer), but also navigated the social dynamics surrounding the patients and their families with empathy and compassion, whether the patient was being discharged with follow-up or requiring palliative services. One patient in particular expressed the desire to “give up and die in the hospital”, refusing medications and food. Margery requested psychiatric evaluation but continued to engage daily with the patient providing a listening ear and encouragement. Loe and behold, the patient no longer desired to engage with psychiatry, starting eating, taking meds, and was eventually discharged to a SNF in good spirits. Kudos to Margery for a job well done!
Samantha Bai
Samantha Bai
Sam was my senior on VA nights, and not only was she extremely helpful teaching me, she was a great mentor for our med student as well. One night, a patient who had just had a LH cath for MI was having mild chest pain and Sam was able to identify ST depressions that nobody else recognized, leading to another heart cath that likely saved his life. Feeling lucky to have worked with her that week!
Koral Shah
Koral Shah
Koral is an excellent team player and problem-solver with a consistently positive attitude. She is very resourceful and was able on numerous occasions to successfully navigate getting tricky patient care tasks done at the VA by taking the initiative to ask around, such as when she learned from the endo clinic how they normally get cort stim labs collected correctly and used this method for a patient on her list. She was eager to learn from the consultants following her patients, regularly discussing their recommendations and the reason behind them over Teams or in person. She was invested in her patients, following their clinical course even if they went to the ICU or were discharged. She was able to coordinate logistical problems like the divvying up of a record number of VA overflow patients across the resident teams, including voluntarily taking some patients above the VA postcall day cap. She’ll be missed at the VA!
Akhila Padi
Akhila Padi
Holy smokes. Akhila blew me away with her effortless ability to carry an in-depth and complex goals of care discussion with a patient with end-stage COPD, along with multiple family members in the room. She had a thorough, organized, and absolutely smooth discussion at a pace and level that was easily understood by the patient/family, and was able to answer all questions with confidence. The patient/family clearly saw her as the leader of the team, which facilitated ongoing trust and stability during future conversations. TLDR: she’s a natural 🙂
Alvin George
Alvin George
Alvin did an exceptional job on Cards Firm this month. While caring for an incredibly sick service, he taught essentially an entire basic curriculum on common cardiac conditions and GDMT. He supported 2 terrific immersions students shepherding them through their first prerounds and oral presentations. He created a wonderful atmosphere of great care and learning on the team. And everyone got done each day at a reasonable hour. He is a superb senior resident!
Scott Beeler
Scott Beeler
Scott may be on nights at the VA, but I’ve heard numerous offhanded stories from the day VA firm residents that reflect the hard work and strong medical decision-making he is bringing to his rotation. From the conscientiousness he showed by combing through the orders for a record number of VA overflow patients to make sure nothing major was missing to the perceptiveness he demonstrated by catching that a patient paged out as a floor admission was experiencing symptomatic complete heart block and needed an ICU bed pending pacemaker placement, Scott has been doing great work that I wanted to recognize!
Sahil Sanghani
Sahil Sanghani
Exceptional 3rd year resident, ready to function independently. Went above and beyond completing bedside procedures and providing education to the medical students and interns, including self devised handouts on common problems like diuretics and dialysis.
Francis Loh
Francis Loh
Stellar ambjar teaching and patient management. guided the medical student through each part, allowed student to err and fumble, and ultimately came up with comprehensive and thoughtful plans for each patient.
Sanjay Palat
Sanjay Palat
This was my second month working with him, and as good as he had been the first month, he was even stronger this time around. He handled each medically or socially complex patient with compassion and empathy, and he has clearly been taking time to learn and grow as a physician throughout the year. He allowed our team to function more like a jar/jar team, and he will make an excellent senior next year. I consulted on a number of patients cared for by Sanjay at the VA and always appreciated his deep knowledge of the patients and their presenting issues and his curiosity to learn more about their cardiovascular problems. He also didn’t bat an eye at doing a rectal exam at 8pm requested by a patient before he would undergo a cardiac catheterization. He ended up getting the indicated procedure (which he had been reluctant to do previously) because he felt his own concerns were addressed by Dr. Palat.
Sarah Jacob
Sarah Jacob
Sarah is the exact type of resident you want on a service. She is a leader that provides immense support to the intern-team, while still allowing for their independence in growth. She has an incredible bedside manner, always laced with sincere empathy that creates a warm and nourishing environment for healing; this was heavily noted within multiple, complex goals of care discussions that were each navigated expertly. Lastly, and most importantly, Sarah’s passion and excitement for medicine is readily evident and motivating for all those around her! Sarah is not only an extremely intelligent physician, but the ease at which she has difficult goals of care conversations with patients is commendable. She did an incredible job leading ACTs, as well as leading the firm team. She was always approachable, had a good balance of letting her interns make their own decisions, and handled difficult situations with ease.
Eric Mittauer
Eric Mittauer
He functioned well on night float, often taking care of complex and high-acuity patients without needing much oversight. Could trust him to take great care of his patients, be detail oriented and thorough, follow through on cross cover tasks, and appropriately reach out for help when needed. Eager to help out in ACTs and codes and overall had a great attitude.