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News from the Emergency Department
Hardin Pantle Earns Bedside Teaching Award
Hardin Pantle, M.D., was recently honored with the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) 2021 National Emergency Medicine Excellence in Bedside Teaching Award.
Pantle is an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has served as an attending physician since 2004, including nine years as assistant director of the emergency department at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Pantle says his “goal is always to help each member of the clinical team perform to their highest potential. For residents and students, this usually involves providing specific, evidence-based suggestions to optimize patient care.”
Pantle is one of two recipients nationally of the ACEP award this year. The recognition honors outstanding educators in the field of emergency medicine and superior clinical teaching as evidenced by teacher ratings, awards, and endorsement from peers, residents and students.
Rodney Omron Honored for Patient Care Excellence
Rodney Omron, M.D., M.P.H., was recently honored for his dedication to patient care by becoming a member of the Miller Coulson Academy of Clinical Excellence at Johns Hopkins.
Omron joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2010 and currently serves as an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The mission of the Miller Coulson Academy is to recognize the consummate academic clinician and to promote excellence in patient care. Members are inducted based on a rigorous evaluation process conducted by external nationally recognized experts and an internal selection committee.
Dr. Omron was inducted Oct. 11, 2021, during the academy’s annual Excellence in Patient Care Symposium.
Katie O’Conor Earns Teaching Award
Katie O’Conor, M.D., recently received the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Housestaff Teaching Award.
Established by the Johns Hopkins Medical Student Senate, the recognition, which is awarded annually by school of medicine students for excellence in clinical teaching, emphasizes the importance that the students attach to the concept of house officers as teachers.
O’Conor is a program year 3 resident in the departments of emergency medicine and anesthesiology and critical care medicine joint residency program. This past year, she taught the critical care clerkship, among other courses, and created a health equity curriculum. O’Conor also took on the role of operations chief in the Johns Hopkins Medicine COVID-19 command center, where she has overseen community mobile vaccination clinics and other efforts to ensure vaccine equity.
J. Lee Jenkins Elected to World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine Board
J. Lee Jenkins, M.D., M.S., was recently named to the 2021–2023 board of directors for the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM). This is her second term on the board. She was selected for the position after a vote by the members of the international organization.
The mission of WADEM is the evidence-based improvement, education and advocacy of emergency and disaster health care and disaster risk reduction. Jenkins serves on the board’s Publication Special Interest Group that facilitates the dissemination of international, evidence-based disaster and emergency medical services (EMS) manuscripts.
Jenkins has been a faculty member of the Department of Emergency Medicine since 2006 and has served as the assistant chief of service, a disaster fellow and the disaster control physician for the department. She developed the first course in disaster medicine and emergency public health in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Jenkins has over 30 peer-reviewed publications in triage, disasters and EMS. She has lectured internationally on disaster medicine and served on multiple national committees. Most recently her team developed the multipathogen approach for EMS providers for emerging infectious diseases. Her disaster response and surveillance efforts have included the volcanic eruption in Montserrat from 2000 to 2005, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the California Wildfires of 2007.
Richard Rothman Earns Organizational Advancement Award
Richard Rothman, M.D., Ph.D., was recently honored with the Organizational Advancement Award from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM).
Rothman is the executive vice chair and vice chair of research in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also holds a joint appointment in the Division of Infectious Diseases.
Since 1996, with a team of Johns Hopkins colleagues, Rothman has been conducting research on various infectious disease conditions in emergency settings. Areas of focus include HIV, sepsis, influenza and now SARS CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. He has expertise and a particular interest in development of rapid molecular diagnostics and their translation into acute care practice, and he has published extensively on this topic. Rothman has served as the principal investigator for federally funded research including multicenter studies designed to advance methods for emergency setting early infectious disease detection and to improve approaches to the conduct of therapeutic trials during a pandemic. Currently, he is the principal investigator and co-director for the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance. Its studies now include COVID-19 research.
During the past year, Rothman also served as co-chair of an American College of Emergency Physicians and SAEM federal research working group, as well as chair of several educational initiatives and national symposiums for SAEM members about evolving research and clinical issues with COVID-19. This work has been conducted in collaboration with colleagues from the Emergency Medicine Transmissible Infectious Diseases and Epidemics (EMTIDE) group, a network of academic emergency departments focused on research, practice and policy regarding emerging and transmissible infectious diseases. Rothman and other SAEM members founded the group.
Emergency Medicine Team Awarded Funding to Fight Racism in Health Care
From left to right: Kamna Balhara, M.D., M.A., Erica Shelton, M.D., M.P.H., Gabor Kelen, M.D.
Faculty members from the Department of Emergency Medicine are among researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to be awarded funding to combat racism in health care. The funding is part of a $4.4 million grant awarded to the university by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which launched Inheritance Baltimore, a three-year program to investigate the history of academic racism in higher education and build a citywide network to preserve Baltimore’s Black history, culture and arts.
Kamna Balhara, M.D., M.A., Erica Shelton, M.D., M.P.H., and Gabor Kelen, M.D., are on one of the multidisciplinary teams selected from across the university and beyond to receive part of the funding through the Johns Hopkins Program in Racism, Immigration and Citizenship, as part of the research cluster Racism and Repair in the Modern Academy: Case Studies of Johns Hopkins University.
Racism and Repair focuses on using historical studies and political and intellectual issues on racism from the 19th and 20th centuries to solve challenges in the 21st century.
During the three-year project, Balhara, Shelton and Kelen will discuss how, since the 1960s, the field of emergency medicine variously alleviated and contributed to the traumatic human costs of individual and structural racism. Through a history of the field’s hiring, training and outreach practices at Johns Hopkins and in East Baltimore, via archival research and oral histories, Balhara, Shelton and Kelen will evaluate the history of emergency medicine as a step toward an anti-racist future in health care.
Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty Members, Residents Join Distinguished Teaching Society
Clockwise from left to right: left to right: Mustapha Saheed, M.D., Caleb Leibee, D.O., Daniel Piening, M.D.
Three Department of Emergency Medicine team members have been inducted into the Distinguished Teaching Society (DTS) of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Mustapha Saheed, M.D., was inducted as an attending, and Caleb Leibee, D.O., and Daniel Piening, M.D., as house staff members.
DTS is a student-organized honor society for outstanding clinical educators of Johns Hopkins medical students. Leibee, Piening and Saheed were chosen out of 50 nominations from the student body.
Saheed is the medical director of the Johns Hopkins Hospital emergency medicine department, where he oversees clinical operations. Leibee is a third-year resident in the Department of Emergency Medicine Residency Program, and Piening is a second-year resident.
Julianna Jung Honored With Teaching Award for Third Time
Julianna Jung, M.D., has earned the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s 2021 George J. Stuart Award. The award is presented annually to an outstanding clinical teacher, and the selection is made by senior medical students.
Jung is the director of medical student education in the Department of Emergency Medicine and associate director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Simulation Center. She oversees several major educational initiatives for Johns Hopkins medical students, including the advanced and core clerkships in emergency medicine, the Comprehensive Clinical Skills Exam and the Transition to the Wards course. She is also a national leader in education, serving on several national task forces and as past president of Clerkship Directors in Emergency Medicine.
Jung also won the George J. Stuart Award in 2013 and 2018.
Lifetime Achievement Award Renamed in Honor of Jim Scheulen
The Academy of Administrators in Academic Emergency Medicine (AAAEM) has renamed its lifetime achievement award in honor of Jim Scheulen, M.B.A, chief administrative officer of emergency medicine and capacity management. In 2019, Scheulen was awarded the recognition named in honor for his 30 years working in emergency medicine. He was a founding member of AAAEM and a past president, as well as founder of the industry standard benchmarking tool, and has been an internationally known thought leader in emergency medicine administration.
Emergency Medicine Health Humanities Program Earns Award
The Department of Emergency Medicine’s Health Humanities at Hopkins Emergency Medicine (H3EM) program has received the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Institute for Excellence in Education (IEE) Educational Program Award for 2021. Kamna Balhara, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine, Nathan Irvin, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine, and Linda Regan, M.D., M.Ed., vice chair of education in the Department of Emergency Medicine and associate professor of emergency medicine, earned the award for creating the H3EM program.
Each year, the IEE, part of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, recognizes a noteworthy medical or biomedical teaching program implemented within the last five years that uses innovative educational strategies and addresses a gap in the field or an institutional or community need.
The H3EM program was founded two years ago. It combines the arts, humanities and social emergency medicine to provide health care team members with the tools necessary to understand the human experiences of health and to better serve the Johns Hopkins and Greater Baltimore communities with patient-centered care. This innovative program encourages education, scholarship and interdisciplinary engagement with stakeholders across the medical campus and Baltimore. The H3EM residency curriculum to date has focused on topics such as social determinants of health and anti-racism. H3EM also hosts a speaker series that has featured physicians, activists, writers and artists. H3EM’s initiatives have resulted in publications in several academic journals, including Journal of the American Medical Association, Academic Emergency Medicine and the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine.
Robert Linton Named ACEP Chairperson of the Year
Robert Linton, M.B.A, M.D., has been selected the American College of Emergency Physicians 2021 Chairperson of the Year. Each year, the award honors an outstanding emergency department chair who demonstrates collaborative relationships with nursing and ancillary departments to implement and improve operational and clinical standards using evidence-based practice.
Linton has been the chair and medical director of the emergency department at Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center since 2014. He oversees all clinical operations of the 40-bed department with more than 160 nursing and technician staff, 43 physicians and physician assistants, and an annual volume of 60,000 patients (pre-COVID volume). Throughout the past year, he has also been a key leader in incident command during the hospital’s COVID-19 response.