The Arnold P. Gold Foundation is pleased to announce the 2022-2023 Gold Humanism Scholars at the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators:
- David Ansari, PhD, of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, whose project will focus on “developing a library of clinical scenarios for the First Death program using technology- and human-based simulation”
- Erica J. Harris, MD, of Einstein Healthcare Network, whose project focuses on developing an “innovative trauma informed care curriculum for diverse learners in an urban emergency department”
- Jasmine R. Marcelin, MD, FACP, FIDSA, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), whose project “JEDI with Jasmine” focuses on “building trust through developing inclusive spaces to discuss principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in healthcare for internal medicine residents and faculty”
“We are excited to welcome the 2022-2023 Gold Humanism Scholars into our community of caring. Drs. Ansari, Harris, and Marcelin are working to expand humanistic care in measurable, tangible ways,” said Ann Bruder, Associate Vice President of Programs at the Gold Foundation. “Their commitment to inclusivity, compassion and respect for patients, families, other healthcare clinicians and colleagues is evident throughout their work.”
Each year, the Gold Foundation selects healthcare educators for this prestigious scholarship whose work helps develop or evaluate educational projects focused on humanistic patient care. The projects must be able to be replicated across healthcare settings, which will amplify their impact even farther.
The Gold Humanism Scholars receive partial scholarships of $5,000 to attend the Harvard Macy Institute (HMI) Program for Educators in the Health Professions. This highly interactive faculty development program meets for two week-long meetings, and then one per month in between, each year in Cambridge, Massachusetts or virtually as circumstances require. Gold Humanism Scholars learn innovative methods to teach and assess their projects, as well as how to steer and champion their projects successfully through a maze of academic requirements.
HMI creates a community of international educators and leaders. The passion for humanism brought by the Gold Humanism Scholars program permeates the educational environment and helps spark new collaborations.
The Gold Humanism Scholars are also mentored by a member of the Harvard Macy Institute Program for Educators faculty who has previously been a Gold Humanism Scholar. Again this year, Gregory Cherr, MD, FACS, who was a 2012 Gold Humanism Scholar, will join the program as a faculty member and mentor. Dr. Cherr is Professor and Senior Associate Dean for GME and Designated Institutional Official (DIO) at Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences – University at Buffalo. He is also Chair of the Gold Humanism Honor Society Advisory Council and member of the Gold Foundation’s Board of Trustees.
“These projects help to codify understanding and compassion into the overall healthcare infrastructure,” said Ms. Bruder. “It is essential that healthcare incorporate such practices that benefit physicians and other healthcare clinicians, trainees, patients and their families.”
Reflecting on the loss of patients: Building a library of clinical scenarios for the First Death program
David Ansari
David Ansari, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and Bridge to Faculty Research Associate in the Department of Medical Education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, where he contributes to research and teaching in health professions education, health humanities, and medical simulation.
Dr. Ansari’s project builds on the First Death program, an innovative undertaking that seeks to minimize the traumatic toll of patient death on the mental health of learners. The program was established in 2019 by the Simulation and Integrative Learning Institute (SAIL) at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago’s (UIC) Department of Medical Education. Learners in health professions, as well as medical students in their first clinical year who are required to take this course, are tasked with participating in a simulation of their first patient death. The simulation is followed by a counseling session with the hospital’s Employee Assistance Program provider, a debriefing session with faculty and peers, and the opportunity to produce a written reflection that details how learners reflect and respond to patient death, as well as the steps they take to seek out support and the compassion and self-care they experience.
In the current form of the simulation, the patient is a young white man in his early 30s with a diagnosis of myocarditis who unexpectedly dies in the care of the learners and SAIL staff. Through his proposed project, Dr. Ansari and colleagues aim to use technology- and human-based simulation to build a library of different scenarios for the First Death program. They plan to expand the range of clinical scenarios to include patients with different health conditions, as well as patients of different ages, races, genders, and languages spoken. The motivating mission of this project is to create scenarios where learners can reflect on a range of different simulated death experiences with their peers, identify and seek support resources, and develop practices of self-care and compassion.
Developing an innovative trauma informed care curriculum for diverse learners in an urban emergency department
Erica J. Harris
Dr. Erica J. Harris is an attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Einstein Healthcare Network-Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Harris is the medical director of Einstein’s Trauma Intervention Program, a hospital-based violence intervention program providing services to violently injured young adults to improve their medical and psychological recovery trajectory and prevent re-injury. She is also an Associate Director of the Jefferson Center for Injury Research and Prevention and a faculty member of the Einstein Center for Humanism. Her work in education focuses on violence intervention, public health, social emergency medicine, trauma informed care and narrative medicine.
At a time when the lives of patients and frontline teams are fraught with rising obstacles and limited resources, Dr. Harris understands that the consequences are many. The ensuing tension in the patient-healer relationship often appears as compassion fatigue, and in extreme cases, vicarious trauma. These consequences are readily visible in emergency medicine, especially in relation to the societal inequities that an unsparing COVID-19 pandemic has revealed so resoundingly. Dr. Harris cites the record number of frontline team members exiting the profession as a critical impetus for implementing trauma-informed care policy. When implemented institutionally, trauma-informed care has strengthened patient engagement and adherence to treatment regimens, as well as increased positive health outcomes and high satisfaction rates.
Dr. Harris’s project aims to expand the existing framework of Einstein’s Trauma Intervention Program, a hospital-based violence intervention program that provides mental health recovery services to victims of violence that include youth and young adults. Through the lens of violence, but also including discussions of all types of physical and emotional trauma, Dr. Harris and her colleagues will devise an innovative year-long, sequential pilot curriculum that will be made available to all staff and medical students in an urban, level-1 trauma center and emergency department. The overarching goal is to provide greater humanistic, compassionate care to the most vulnerable and marginalized patients. Equally pivotal, the project looks to influence the trauma-informed care that team members themselves adopt for strengthening their self-care practices. The program will then be implemented across other departments throughout the hospital, which will then pave the way for the development of a trauma-informed hospital, and eventually an entire hospital system.
JEDI with Jasmine – building trust through developing inclusive spaces to discuss principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in healthcare for internal medicine residents and faculty
Jasmine R. Marcelin
Dr. Jasmine R. Marcelin is an Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases, in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in Omaha, Nebraska. She is also Co-Director of Digital Innovation & Social Media Strategy for the Division of Infectious Diseases, Associate Medical Director of Antimicrobial Stewardship, and Associate Program Director of the UNMC Internal Medicine Residency. In 2021, Dr. Marcelin was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society and recognized as an exemplar of humanistic patient care serving as a role model, mentor, and leader in medicine.
In addition to her commitment to humanistic practices, Dr. Marcelin reflects a keen awareness that in order to truly address structural racism in healthcare and society, we need to move beyond statements and performance to concrete, anti-racist praxis.
Dr. Marcelin’s project expands on an existing program that she developed to teach learners the skills needed to understand, recognize, and dismantle structural racism in healthcare. The longitudinal project, known as “Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion [JEDI] with Jasmine,” was first implemented in 2020 and builds on the infrastructure for institutional progress through the leveraging of innovative, monthly curricular components. The project is a means for tangibly making the Internal Medicine (IM) residency as culturally attuned as possible. The steps to achieving that broad inclusivity include providing a safe space for exploration, inviting residents to discuss their personal and/or witnessed experiences in which applying JEDI principles would have made a difference, and training IM residents/faculty with the tools needed to be active upstanders and healthcare justice advocates. Dr. Marcelin’s project proposes additional revisions to the JEDI with Jasmine series such as incorporating prompts, breakout discussions, and group discussions about specific JEDI topics that IM residents may encounter through interprofessional lunch and learn sessions with patient-care cases that highlight justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in healthcare.
