Tag: homelessness

Amy Zhang, MD, MBA Amy Zhang, MD, MBA (1 Posts)

Resident Physician Contributing Author

University of Washington School of Medicine

Amy Zhang is a resident physician in anesthesiology at the University of Washington and a board member in the Resident and Fellow Physician Union - Northwest (RFPU-NW). She is first-generation/low-income (FGLI) and graduated from Yale with joint MD and MBA degrees. Her hobbies include swimming and drawing.




Do Individuals from Low-Income Families Belong in Medicine? (Yes!)

Published by Amy Zhang, MD, MBA

Recently, several attending physicians sparked controversy on Twitter by implying that low-income medical students or trainees should not pursue careers in medicine. While these tweets have since been deleted, the systemic injustices that they echo still ring in the highest levels of modern medical education. As a medical trainee from an impoverished household, I have spent almost my entire post-secondary education and medical training as part of an invisible demographic.

Facing the Inevitable: A Resident Physician’s Perspective on the COVID-19 Pandemic

Published by Vanessa Van Doren, MD

As I check in on my patients each morning, I wonder if some will unexpectedly decompensate and die over the coming weeks. I think about myself and my co-residents who are in the hospital all day swabbing patients for COVID-19 without adequate personal protective equipment. Many of my co-residents are on home isolation as a result of this exposure, waiting for their test results and praying that our government will step up and fund more mask production, or civilians will return the N95s they’ve hoarded, or the set of a TV medical drama will donate their props to us.

Vanessa Van Doren, MD Vanessa Van Doren, MD (1 Posts)

Resident Physician Contributing Writer

Emory University School of Medicine

Vanessa Van Doren is a PGY-2 in the Emory University School of Medicine’s J. Willis Hurst Internal Medicine Residency program and a current participant in the Health, Equity, Advocacy, and Policy Track. She is a past national board member of Students for a National Health Program (SNaHP) and past Health Policy Committee Leader of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s American Medical Student Association (AMSA) chapter. She co-founded the Health Advocacy Leadership Organization, a longitudinal 4-year health policy and advocacy elective at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Dr. Van Doren's career plans are focused on ways to integrate research, clinical medicine, and advocacy to help build a truly equitable health care system.