Caring for aging ill parents How to navigate this chapter of life

How can we prepare for this chapter of life? Join us as three amazing speakers share their journey caring for their parents while juggling academic careers in emergency medicine.

Authors

Shan Liu, MD, SD

Associate Professor, Emergency Medicine

Harvard Medical School

Shan W. Liu, MD, SD, is an associate professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the Geriatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship Director and attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. She co-leads the Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines project, is a past-President of AGEM, and has served on the executive boards of the IFEM and ACEP geriatric sections. She is the author of the award-winning illustrated children's book Masked Hero: How Wu Lien-teh Invented the Mask and Ended an Epidemic, a story about how her great-grandfather invented the first respirator mask.
Surriya Ahmad, MD

Attending Physician

New York

Surriya Ahmad, MD, completed a five year combined Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine residency at the State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University and Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, NY, and is double board certified in Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine. She completed a Geriatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship at Weill Cornell/New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. She has been a member of SAEM and AGEM for five years, serving on the AGEM Executive Committee for three years, and is the current Secretary of AGEM. Between taking care of patients in public inner-city Level 1 Trauma Centers and Tertiary Care Centers in Brooklyn and New York over the last seven years, and through her experience spending time with her father and grandmother, she grew more interested in how to best optimize the care of older adults in the ED, including prioritizing communication with patients and families, comfort-mental and physical, and overall experience and wellness.
Elizabeth M. Goldberg, MD, ScM

Brown University
I completed a four year emergency medicine residency at Brown University. After two years as EM faculty, I started a three year post-doctoral research fellowship at the Center of Gerontology and Health Care Research (AHRQ T32 funded) at the Brown School of Public Health. I completed a master of science in epidemiology during this time and improved my research methods and clinical geriatrics skills. I am currently the geriatric faculty champion for our health system, which cares for 280,000 ED patients per year. In this role, I am liaison with the division of geriatrics and palliative care and have championed several initiatives. These include leading a multidisciplinary group of stakeholders to develop a new state-wide nursing home to ED transfer form, implementing informatics solutions to improve safe prescribing for older adults, and creating a Nurse Innovators in Aging program to encourage ED nurses to obtain their gerontology certification. I have held a GEMSSTAR and currently hold a BEESON grant to test a fall prevention intervention, GAPcare. I have been an active leader within SAEM since I was a resident and served as the EMRA research committee vice chair and chair. As faculty I have been a member of AWAEM and served as didactics committee co-chair for two years and subsequently as the VP of Education. I am currently the Treasurer for AGEM and this role has given me an opportunity to focus on our AGEM priorities and work closer with the executive committee. I would be excited to lead AGEM and help us grow our outreach efforts and funding, so that we can improve geriatric ED care for our patients and our research efforts.
Amy H. Kaji, MD, PhD

SAEM Immediate Past President / SAEMF Member-at-Large

Los Angeles County-Harbor-UCLA Medical Center

Amy H. Kaji, MD PhD is vice-chair of academic affairs in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. After graduating from Harvard University, Dr. Kaji attended Thomas Jefferson Medical School. Prior to "seeing the light," Dr. Kaji performed two years of a categorical general surgery residency at the University of Chicago. She then performed her emergency medicine internship, residency, and research/disaster medicine fellowship at Harbor-UCLA. Under the mentorship of Dr. Roger Lewis, Dr. Kaji completed a doctorate in epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health during her fellowship.

Since her fellowship, Dr. Kaji has been active in SAEM. She has previously served as Membership Committee chair, a Research sub-committee chair, as well as on the Nominating committee, and the steering committee of the Science of Surge and Simulation consensus conferences, prior to joining the SAEM Board of Directors. Dr. Kaji enjoys combining her interest in statistical methodology, emergency medicine, and writing through editorial activities – she is a methodological/statistical editor for Annals of Emergency Medicine and JAMA Surgery, as well as an editor for the 9th edition of the Rosen's Emergency Medicine textbook.