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Match Day 2021: Graduating Medical Students Receive Their Residency Matches

Mar 24, 2021 | Featured

Mount Sinai’s Class of 2021 received locked boxes that contained sealed envelopes with the names of the residency programs they had matched to. At noon on Match Day, they were given the code to unlock their boxes.

One-hundred forty-five students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai learned what the next phase of their career path would be at Match Day 2021, when each of them opened a carefully sealed envelope that revealed the U.S. residency program they had “matched” to and would be attending this year following graduation. The suspenseful moments leading up to their collective and coordinated noontime “discoveries” were shared over Zoom on Friday, March 19, with 400 participants, including family, friends, and Mount Sinai faculty and staff who supported the Class of 2021 with smiles, cheers, and words of encouragement.

Each year, the matches are orchestrated through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP), which uses mathematical algorithms to align the preferences of applicants with the preferences of residency programs available at teaching hospitals across the nation. Match Day 2021 was the largest in the NRMP’s history, with more than 42,000 applicants.

Almost two-thirds of Mount Sinai’s students will be entering residency programs at the nation’s top 20 hospitals, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Barnes Jewish Hospital, and the Cleveland Clinic. The Class of 2021 will pursue specialties such as Emergency Medicine, Anesthesiology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Otolaryngology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, General Surgery, and Internal Medicine—the most popular discipline, which drew 33 students.

Sixty-seven Icahn Mount Sinai students will enter residencies at the Mount Sinai Health System, which runs the largest residency program in the country. These Mount Sinai alumni will be joined by newcomers to the Health System—including students from 18 of the nation’s top 20 medical schools—all of whom will begin their programs in July. Residents from leading medical schools in countries such as Argentina, India, Ireland, and Japan will be among them.

James Blum, who matched to the Emergency Medicine program at Boston Medical Center, said, “I am so excited to be heading to Boston to care for patients at an incredible institution that values health equity, where I can continue the work I started at Mount Sinai to expand access to health care.” As a medical student, Mr. Blum assumed progressive leadership roles with Mount Sinai’s East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership (EHHOP), a student-run, physician-supervised free clinic that conducts more than 1,000 patient visits annually for people who live in East Harlem.

Students Chloe Getrajdman and Jonathan Pan were excited about their next steps, too. Ms. Getrajdman will be specializing in Obstetrics and Gynecology as a resident at Mount Sinai. The time she spent working at EHHOP’s Women’s Health Clinic, she says, “has inspired me to continue working with the East Harlem community and alongside physicians who are passionate about providing care to underserved populations.” Mr. Pan, who also held leadership roles in EHHOP, will be pursuing a combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency in Houston, at Baylor College of Medicine.

Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System, congratulated the students on their “fantastic” match results. He said the COVID-19 pandemic had posed enormous challenges for the entire medical community and that Mount Sinai’s students had played an important role in helping the Health System. He said they had also become more resilient along the way.

“This has been a year like no other,” he told the students. “You will never forget your fourth year in medical school and that is a good thing because you have grown to become not only outstanding physicians but also resilient individuals. When you meet challenges later on in life you will look back on this year with pride and say, ‘I can overcome this obstacle.’”

A Photographer Provides a Unique Look Inside Mount Sinai Brooklyn During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Mar 18, 2021 | Community, Featured

Last fall, an accomplished freelance photographer working for The New York Times was given access inside Mount Sinai Brooklyn to document the care being provided to COVID-19 patients.

One of the images recently appeared in a lengthy photo essay titled “A City Ruptured” showing the changes to New York’s economy due to the pandemic. And the photographer, Ashley Gilbertson, a New York City resident known for his photographs of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, shared additional images.

The black and white photos are dramatic and moving, and they provide a rare glimpse of a hospital doing what is necessary to care for patients and serve its community during a time of crisis.

“As I look at these images, what I see is staff, nurses, techs, and doctors, providing care for very sick and fragile patients,” says Peter Shearer, MD, FACEP, Chief Medical Officer and Vice President, Medical Staff, at Mount Sinai Brooklyn.

He adds, “One year into this pandemic we only have a few, modestly effective new medications for COVID-19. What keeps these patients from dying is the endless care that staff provides: care is encouraging confused patients to keep their uncomfortable oxygen masks on; care is helping a patient spend time lying on their belly; care is ambulating patients so they don’t weaken during their stay. Providing this care is hard work, and these people have been doing it day and night for over a year. The staff also provides care to co-workers, and that sense of community keeps us going.”

Mount Sinai Employees Reflect as a Community One Year into the Pandemic

Mar 16, 2021 | Community, COVID-19, Featured

On Thursday, March 11, 2021, Mount Sinai Health System employees marked one year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic with a day of reflection.

Across Mount Sinai, at 10:30 am, 4:30 pm, and 11:30 pm, employees paused to reflect on everything they have experienced this last year—the loss of loved ones and cherished colleagues, the struggles that have helped them grow, the ways our world has changed, the means by which they find resilience, and the moments and people for whom they are grateful. Sharing this moment together allowed members of the Mount Sinai community to acknowledge where they have been, how they feel today, and how they will move forward together.

Employees at Mount Sinai Queens gathered outside to share the moment together while the Rev. Rachelle Zazzu, DDS, read a blessing and eloquently stated, “One year ago, COVID-19 changed the world. We could suddenly see the top of the tallest mountains, but not our friends and our family. And it changed us forever.”

At Mount Sinai Beth Israel, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, and many of the surrounding ambulatory sites, leaders, chaplains, and wellness committee members rounded on all three shifts over a 24-hour period. They brought LED tea lights and sticky notes to work areas and invited staff to remember and reflect. Many expressed appreciation for the opportunity to participate. Recurrent themes included sadness about loved ones lost to COVID-19, hope about the approaching end of the pandemic, and pride in their “work families.”

The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai-Union Square, and other ambulatory locations collected notes of resilience and loss in a central location with tea lights for the community to view and experience collectively. Many sites also shared information on Mount Sinai’s employee wellness resources.

“We had quite a bit of patient participation and a lot of valuable conversations about what people have endured in the past year, whom they have lost, and what they are grateful for,” said Lititia Satpathy, Project Manager, who organized the event at Mount Sinai-Union Square. “Hosting the event in the atrium attracted a lot of attention toward the table, and even if people did not choose to write a note or light a candle, almost everyone acknowledged the meaning behind this important day.”

Like the rest of the world, the Mount Sinai community has experienced immeasurable loss and sacrifice on an individual and community level. And yet, through groundbreaking innovation, an unwavering commitment to our patients, and exceptional agility and teamwork, Mount Sinai employees have saved thousands of lives and have vaccinated tens of thousands of people, bringing us closer as a community and closer to the end of this pandemic.

New Study Uses an Apple Watch to Measure Stress and Resilience of Health Care Workers During the Pandemic

Mar 11, 2021 | Featured

Having a strong social network of family and friends has long been associated with an individual’s happiness and ability to bounce back from life’s setbacks. Now, a team of researchers at the Mount Sinai Health System has used the Apple Watch to capture the effect of such networks on the body, as well, by connecting resilience and support with an individual’s heart rate variability (HRV)—a primary component of the body’s autonomic nervous system (ANS) and a keen indicator of the effect of stress on the body.

Zahi A. Fayad, PhD

In a preliminary study of 361 Mount Sinai health care workers conducted between April and September 2020—a period that included the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City—the researchers identified characteristics that indicate whether a health care worker is prone to worsening stress from the pandemic. They found that individuals with high resilience or emotional support were protected against the effects of stress and had different ANS stress patterns compared with those who had medium or low emotional support or resilience.

The physiological measurements were captured on Apple Watches worn by the participants, who downloaded a customized app. The researchers found that the participants’ physiological results aligned with their self-reported surveys.

“Individuals may tell us about their feelings or symptoms, which is subjective, but HRV is how your body speaks and reveals itself,” says the study’s senior author, Zahi A. Fayad, PhD, Director of the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute, and Professor of Radiology, and Medicine (Cardiology), at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. HRV, which is influenced by the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, is a measure of the variation in the heart’s beat-to-beat intervals.

According to the study’s corresponding author, Robert P. Hirten, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Gastroenterology), there was a range of emotional support and resilience across health care occupations.

Robert P. Hirten, MD

“One of our goals with this study was to see how the pandemic was affecting the psychological well-being of health care workers and whether we could identify features that would allow us to see which workers would be at risk from these psychological effects over time,” says Dr. Hirten. “If you’re a large health system, you want to make sure your employees have the psychological support they need so they don’t develop long-term effects from the pandemic. Measuring resilience and emotional support may be one way to identify at-risk health care workers.”

The study was initiated at the same time the Mount Sinai Center for Stress, Resilience, and Personal Growth was launched by the Mount Sinai Health System. This comprehensive, first-of-its-kind initiative was designed to help front-line workers manage the ongoing psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through workshops, counseling, and wellness apps.

Drs. Fayad and Hirten say that going forward, combining their study with the interventions available through the Center for Stress, Resilience, and Personal Growth will allow Mount Sinai’s most vulnerable health care workers to build resilience and feel they are part of a supportive network.

“COVID-19 disrupted many lives, not only from a health point of view but from routines and social interactions,” says Dr. Fayad. “Many people will recover and that’s resilience. But some other people may not and that’s why we need to offer interventions. That is the power of this technology. It provides us with information you wouldn’t capture in a visit to the doctor or the hospital, but it would be helpful to integrate into our daily life.”

Dr. Hirten says the team’s next steps will be to “study the effects of resilience-building interventions on HRV, the ANS, and on improving the well-being of health care workers.”

In December, Drs. Fayad and Hirten published the results of a separate study among health care workers that showed an Apple Watch detected subtle changes in an individual’s heartbeat that signaled the onset of COVID-19 up to seven days before they were diagnosed with the infection.

These charts below show differences in the nervous system over 24 hours in those with high, medium, and low resilience and emotional support.

COVID-19 Survivors Only Need One Vaccine Dose, New Study Shows

Mar 11, 2021 | Featured

New research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai shows that COVID-19 survivors build strong immune responses after one vaccine dose. In fact, their immune response to the first vaccine dose is equal to—or in some cases even better than—the response to a second vaccine dose in someone who has not had COVID-19.

These significant new findings appear in a study led by Viviana Simon, MD, PhD, and Florian Krammer, PhD, which was published in a letter to the editor in the March 10, 2021, edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Viviana Simon, MD, PhD

“We believe that a single dose of the authorized mRNA vaccines (from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna) is sufficient for people who have already been infected by SARS-CoV-2,” the virus that causes COVID-19, says Dr. Simon, Professor of Microbiology, and Medicine (Infectious Diseases), at Icahn Mount Sinai. “Our study showed that the antibody response to the first vaccine dose in people with pre-existing immunity is equal to or even exceeds the response in uninfected people after the second dose.”

The study included 110 participants. After their first vaccine dose, COVID-19 survivors who were seropositive at the time of the dose generated antibody levels that were 10 to 45 times higher than their seronegative counterparts who had never been infected by SARS-CoV-2. Equally significant, antibody levels in seronegative individuals rose by a factor of three after their second vaccine dose, while seropositive individuals had no increase in their levels of antibodies after that dose.

Panel A shows the quantitative SARS-CoV-2 spike antibody titers or levels for 110 participants. (These were assessed by means of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and expressed as area under the curve [AUC].) Some participants with pre-existing immunity had antibody titers below detection (AUC of 1) at time point before vaccination. Panel B shows the relative frequency of vaccine-associated side effects after the first vaccine dose in 230 participants.

“Our findings suggest that a single dose of vaccine elicits a very rapid response in individuals who have previously tested positive for SARS-CoV-2,” says Dr. Krammer, Mount Sinai Professor in Vaccinology in the Department of Microbiology at Icahn Mount Sinai. “The first dose for these individuals resembles the second (booster) dose in people who have not been infected.”

There were no substantial differences between the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in the antibody responses they elicited, according to the researchers.

Florian Krammer, PhD

Mount Sinai’s team also observed that in an overlapping group of 230 participants, seropositive individuals experienced more intense—but well tolerated—physical reactions than seronegative individuals following their first doses of the vaccine. Interestingly, the frequency with which they reported fatigue, headaches, fever, chills, and muscle and joint pain after their first dose was similar to the responses among seronegative individuals after their second vaccine dose. Researchers say this is to be expected after the body recognizes the virus—or vaccine—and responds vigorously.

Drs. Simon and Krammer say their findings will require further investigation to determine whether these early differences in immune responses are maintained over a prolonged period of time. If the results hold up, they could influence a change in public policy that would require COVID-19 survivors to have only one dose of the authorized mRNA vaccines. According to Dr. Krammer, several European countries have already updated their policies based on these findings.

“If that approach were to translate into public health policy (that is more widely adopted), it could not only expand limited vaccine supplies, but control the more frequent and pronounced reactions to those vaccines experienced by COVID-19 survivors,” says Dr. Simon.

One Year Later: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Says ‘Thank You’ To Residents Who Joined Front-Line Workers During Pandemic Peak

Mar 3, 2021 | Community, Featured

Andres Arredondo, MD

There are many reasons why the Mount Sinai community should be thankful for the residents and fellows who help provide care every day. But their contributions during the height of the pandemic a year ago may be one of the most dramatic, and that was on the minds of many recently as they marked “Thank a Resident Day.”

“As New York City entered its darkest days during the peak of the pandemic, our residents and fellows wanted to jump right in and join their colleagues on the front lines in an act of great professionalism and compassion. They were the backbone that kept us all going during a very difficult time,” says I. Michael Leitman, MD, FACS, Dean for Graduate Medical Education at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “It makes me proud and very, very happy to know them and work shoulder to shoulder with them,” says Dr. Leitman, a surgeon who specializes in minimally invasive surgical innovations to treat abdominal conditions.

Icahn Mount Sinai runs the nation’s largest and one of the oldest training programs for medical residents. Each year, these programs train approximately 2,500 residents and clinical fellows—doctors in training—in every specialty, including several specialty areas that are highly ranked by Doximity, which polls doctors on the best U.S. training programs. Specialties ranked in the top 20 include Dermatology (No. 4), Physical Medicine/Rehabilitation (No. 9), Nuclear Medicine (No. 12), Otolaryngology (No. 12), Psychiatry (No. 15), OB/GYN (No. 18), and Ophthalmology (No. 20).

Andres Arredondo, MD, is a resident in emergency medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital who spent time at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens—considered an epicenter of the pandemic in New York City—when the pandemic struck last spring. Originally from Colombia, he was struck by the disproportionate effect of the pandemic on the Hispanic community.

Ciera Sears, MD

“The impact of the pandemic on the Hispanic community really highlighted the need for us to place an emphasis on addressing the social determinants of health, such as economic stability, crowded living conditions, quality education, and access to health care,” he says. “We worked long, hard hours but we banded together and supported each other. I was impressed by my fellow residents. Some voluntarily worked extra shifts, some started fundraisers for the Queen’s community, while others helped out in departments that were stretched. We all pushed ourselves to give as much as we could. I’m thankful for all of these things.”

Ciera Sears, MD, a fellow in Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, was one of many fellows and residents called upon during the pandemic to embed in the hospital’s emergency department, where she would provide counsel to patients at risk of dying, all the while giving much appreciated support to her busy colleagues in the ED.

“We were seeing patients in the worst days, close to death, and alone. Because it was too risky to allow family to enter the hospital, their only support was their doctors and nurses,” says Dr. Sears. Dr. Sears was infected with COVID-19 during the first week New York State was in lockdown. She lost her sense of smell for six months but is now feeling well.

At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement was gaining momentum, and Dr. Sears was on the front lines. “Here I was risking my life to fight this pandemic which disproportionately affects Blacks and Hispanics, and simultaneously engaging in protests,” she says.

Click here to watch a special video thanking Mount Sinai residents and fellows from Scott Gottlieb, MD, the FDA commissioner from 2017 to 2019, who graduated from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and was a resident in Mount Sinai’s Internal Medicine Residency Program. Dr. Gottlieb is a member of the Mount Sinai Board of Trustees.

Caitlyn Kuwata, MD

Caitlyn Kuwata, MD, also a fellow in Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, was deployed to the ED where she used her training in palliative medicine to support patients and their families with difficult decisions and symptom management, sometimes with patients who had very little time left.

“Because the COVID numbers were so high, we did a lot of emergency consults on big issues like patient values and goals surrounding quality of life in the context of COVID. It was very eye opening and emotional. One of the hardest aspects of our work was assisting our patients in saying goodbye to family members who were not allowed to visit,” she says.

She became infected with COVID-19 in March. “The two week quarantine while sick was really hard. I wanted to work and I wanted to be useful,” she says.

“Like all of our wonderful staff, my fellows were rock stars during the pandemic and beyond,” says Helen Fernandez, MD, MPH, Professor and Program Director for Geriatrics and Palliative Care at Icahn Mount Sinai, the top rated Department of Geriatrics in the United States according to U.S. News & World Report. “They were true advocates for patients and caregivers, helping them navigate complex decision making. I consider myself extremely lucky to work with such gifted and talented staff. Our future is bright.”

Thank a Resident Day, created in 2018, was marked on February 26. It is one of a number of programs run by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation to champion humanism in health care. The foundation also established the White Coat Ceremony in 1993 as a way to welcome first year medical students.

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