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With two dogs barking in the background, Dr. Wu spoke from her home just before the holidays. Her dogs, a German Shepherd mix and an Australian Shepherd, unaccustomed to her daytime company, were enjoying her attention. 

The Emergency Medicine 2nd year resident was working remotely while she recovered from surgery to repair a broken ankle, the result of an unfortunate fall from a bouldering wall in her local climbing gym.

Dr. Wu got into bouldering seven months prior, after spending nearly a decade rope climbing, which she learned with friends back home in Tucson, AZ. Climbing helps balance the fast-paced environment of the emergency room and maintain her mental health. With a high turnover rate, Emergency Medicine doctors burn out quickly. Maintaining a balance can help curb that rate. 

Dr. Wu has always been drawn to medicine, “In college I was equally interested in medicine and history but landed squarely on the side of medicine.” History, specifically post-WWII and Cold War era remained favorite topics and became the focus of her minor during her undergraduate degree studies.  

In her Emergency Medicine department, Dr. Wu and her teammates perfect a well-rehearsed routine. “It takes time for everyone to get the dance right. We all move in-sync with one another, and the team can often anticipate the next move with our patient. With the high turnover in Emergency Medicine and a shortage of nurses across all specialties, it can be a challenge to bring new team members up to speed. In our department, timing is critical. We need people to jump in and learn the dance quickly.” 

Her fast-paced specialty means meet, greet, treat and street, to see as many patients as possible any given day. 

The goal is always to treat and discharge a patient, but there are some who return. “We are the easiest medical care facility for the homeless population to access, and we do see some of them frequently,” said Dr Wu. She understands that unless other pieces of the homeless population puzzle are solved, such as social resources, housing, access to outpatient care, Emergency Medicine doctors will continue to have repeat patients from the homeless population.  

Physicians in emergency medicine can suffer from moral injury when the same person, or the same population of people, are treated repeatedly without signs of improvement. These experiences can lead to physician departure. Maintaining her mental health and being active in policy discussions are two ways that Dr. Wu prevents her own moral injury. 

Two areas of her focus are climate change and climate justice. “Climate change is increasingly being discussed in medicine from the perspective of extreme weather events and disasters that require a medical response. Climate justice involves individuals who lack the resources or the ability to relocate from an unsafe area and disproportionately feel the impact of climate change. These are generally members of lower income communities who do not recover easily following a disaster,” she explained. 

Dr. Wu advocates climate solution policy as a priority to legislators. She also encourages communities to develop disaster plans to implement following a disaster. 

Her focus is on both physician and patient health and wellbeing. While she addresses patient health daily, as an MSDC member, she is also involved with physician policy to address broader ways to improve the medical work environment. Bereavement policy is one such issue. “There isn’t enough grieving time allocated for physicians and it isn’t part of FMLA. Residents work a lot of hours and need time to grieve when they lose a loved one,” said Dr. Wu. 

Dr. Wu works a four-week block rotation in her residency. Several times each year she dedicates up to 80 hours for critical care weeks, when she works on the inpatient side in the intuitive care unit, which has longer hours overall. She allocates additional time to her work in policy. Despite the demanding hours from her career, she doesn’t feel that she is making sacrifices. 

Her husband, Matthew, is a school counselor and works on the frontline of a different battle these days. His fear of heights keeps his feet firmly planted on the trail rather than bouldering up any rockfaces, but he too needs to maintain a balance. The two self-described foodies enjoy trivia night at some of their favorite D.C. eateries such as Wundergarten where Dr. Wu can unleash her history knowledge.