This interview is one in a series of interviews with recipients of the 2024 ACGME Awards. The awardees join an outstanding group of previous honorees whose work and contributions to graduate medical education (GME) represent the best in the field. They will be honored at the ACGME Annual Educational Conference, taking place March 7-9, 2024, in Orlando, Florida. As part of its Awards program, the ACGME also jointly presents the Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellowship in the Clinical Transaction each year in collaboration with the New York Academy of Medicine.
2024-2026 Barondess Fellow Dr. Emily Murphy is an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
ACGME: Why did you want to become a physician?
Dr. Murphy: You can tell something about me by the fact that I ultimately chose a career in Med-Peds: I am not someone who likes to choose. In medicine, I found a career where I would not have to give up any of the things that I loved – making connections, curiosity, nerdiness, advocacy, teaching.
ACGME: What has been the most rewarding part of your medical education?
Murphy: It’s so fun to watch your former learners grow. Due to my residency training, I had a fourth-year victory lap after my categorical colleagues graduated, but that meant that I got to co-senior with the same doctors who were once my interns. Now as an attending, I’ve gotten to watch former medical students thrive as residents, and residents become co-attendings. It’s easy to miss progress due to the intensity of the day-to-day, but the process works!
ACGME: What has been the most challenging?
Murphy: Residency was definitely the most challenging part of my education. It was the first time in my life where I felt like I had to ration my energy. In order to be the best person possible while inside the hospital, I found myself letting go of who I was outside of the hospital. As a faculty member, it’s been gratifying to have the space to reconcile those two selves (and hopefully make it easier for my residents to do the same).
ACGME: What, to you, is the most important or most meaningful part of the clinical transaction?
Murphy: I find the opening moments in meeting a patient, when we can make connections as humans rather than physician and patient, to be the most rewarding. In hospital medicine, we have relatively short relationships with our patients, but the stakes are incredibly high, so establishing that individual connection early is important. This is sometimes through humor, a shared interest, or a memory, but creating this foundation permits the rest of the clinical transaction to be successful.
ACGME: How will you apply the fellowship?
Murphy: I plan to develop and implement a practical, multidisciplinary curriculum to improve internal medicine resident competence in addressing social determinants of health. Since January of this year, we are required by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to screen for social determinants of health during all adult inpatient encounters, so addressing social determinants of health is a skill that we will all need to learn. My goal is to design a curriculum that integrates as seamlessly as possible into clinical care, to not only improve resident knowledge, skills, and burn-out, but to directly impact patient outcomes as well.
ACGME: What does it mean to you to receive this award?
Murphy: I feel so humbled to have been awarded the Barondess Fellowship. I think there are so many opportunities to improve how we teach about social determinants of health and there are a tremendous number of stakeholders, from learners to nursing to social work to the patients. The Barondess Fellowship will provide the time to fully integrate the needs of these stakeholders into my curriculum, to assess how stakeholder needs might evolve as the CMS requirements are implemented, and to pilot and optimize my curricular components. I am honored to have been granted the opportunity to do so.
ACGME: What advice would you give to other residents/fellows looking to either replicate your project or implement an original idea in their own program or institution?
Murphy: On the stepping stones to my current project, I’ve been reminded of that medical educators are the most collaborative, creative, and friendly group imaginable. There is certainly a lot of serendipity in finding the space to implement projects, but if you have a supportive group of educators as your constant, they will help you find a way.
ACGME: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Murphy: Thank you again to the New York Academy of Medicine and the ACGME for this incredible opportunity!
Learn more about the Jeremiah A. Barondess Fellowship in the Clinical Transaction and consider applying in the future. The application period for the 2025-2027 award will open in early fall 2024.