People Profile – Dr. Sharmeen Husain, MD

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Shar Husain, MD, (PGY-5, General Surgery)

Shar Husain, MD, (PGY-5, General Surgery) will soon complete her fifth year of residency and join the faculty at the MedStar Health (Baltimore) Residency Program in General Surgery. While many of her peers will go on to fellowship training, Dr. Husain is eager to pursue a different calling—”to help fill the country’s need for community general surgeons.”

Dr. Husain recalls, at a young age, being exposed to the issues associated with a lack of accessible healthcare. Since then, she’s always wanted to be able to do something to counteract that.

Dr. Husain also loves that her specialty offers her the ability to help people through some of the most dire points in their lives, especially since, she says, “Surgery often has a direct and immediate impact on someone’s lifestyle and well-being.”

The MedStar Health (Baltimore) Residency Program in General Surgery is a small and close-knit program where everything is truly a team effort, according to Dr. Husain.

To highlight this camaraderie and tell others about the program, Dr. Husain manages its X account, @MedStarBaltSurg (which is definitely worth a follow!).

“We have a lot of fun and love working with each other. It’s an excellent place to train and we do some pretty amazing things, and I want to share that with the world,” Dr. Husain explains.

While Dr. Husain writes and posts the content, she says @MedStarBaltSurg is also a team effort as other residents and faculty regularly contribute photos—and are often the subject of posts! Last year’s Halloween pumpkin carving contest, a trip to Boston for the American College of Surgeons meeting, recent grand round presentations, and a welcome to the new general surgery interns are just some of the topics that have been featured.

Through @MedStarBaltSurg, Dr. Husain hopes to reach not only MedStar Health GME learners and faculty, as well as hospital staff, but also incoming potential MedStar Health GME residency candidates.

While colleagues may know Dr. Husain as their team’s social media chief, ready to capture all of the fun and interesting moments of their MedStar Health GME residencies, they may not know she’s also musically inclined and plays both the clarinet and the saxophone.

People Profiles – Dr. Jason Crowner

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Jason Crowner, MD, Vascular Surgery

For Jason Crowner, MD, (Vascular Surgery), his specialty is the perfect intersection of the things he likes most about being a physician: his patients and the opportunity for problem solving.

“Vascular surgery,” he explains, “usually has a couple different right answers to a problem. The key is to choose the one that works best for the patient. So, figuring that out with the patient is one of my favorite parts of my job.”

Dr. Crowner pursued medicine not only because he liked the idea of helping people but also because he found the biology and physiology of the body to be interesting and amazing. “The vascular system is fascinating—how our body works to get blood flow to places that don’t have it…how our body can adjust to vessels that become narrowed or obstructed­. When I learned about vascular surgery, all of this came together and just seemed to fit,” Dr. Crowner explains.

To learn more about the human body, Dr. Crowner performs clinical research on peripheral arterial disease and operative techniques for treatment. With the help of MedStar Health GME residents and fellows, as well as medical students, Dr. Crowner also studies how surgical education can be improved. For example, his team recently completed a project that assessed medical students’ opinions of surgery as a career and the factors that would encourage or discourage them from pursuing a career in surgery. Another study currently underway is a surgical simulation project that assesses multi-tasking and stress as it relates to surgical teaching. Through this study, his team hopes to determine how these factors influence the overall ability to train surgical residents.

Dr. Crowner says his partners and his chief have been instrumental in his own surgical career and his success at MedStar Health.

“Having people you work with who are there to back you up and help you out is vital.” To foster supportive relationships with peers and attendings, he offers the following advice to MedStar Health GME learners, “Be nice to everyone, and ask for help early.”

Dr. Crowner is originally from a small town in Illinois called Nauvoo. He attended Illinois State University for undergrad and Southern Illinois University for medical school before traveling to the University of North Carolina for surgical training. Eventually, he made his way to Baltimore, Maryland, where he now lives, to join MedStar Health. If Dr. Crowner had his way—namely if student loans didn’t exist(!)—he says, “I would be very tempted to live the ‘van life’ with my family and travel around the US/world.”

People Profiles – Dr. Eric Wisotzky

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Eric Wisotzky, MD, (Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation) says that a passion for helping people get through difficult life experiences is what led him to pursue a career in medicine, and in particular, his specialty. The philosophy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R), he explains, is based on helping patients participate in the things that are most meaningful to them—for example, family roles and recreational activities—despite debilitating medical challenges.

Dr. Wisotzky credits his mentors at MedStar Health with his own ability to pursue what he most values. “From day one, my mentors have supported me in pursuing the parts of my career that are most meaningful to me: caring for the patients I’m so passionate about, pursuing the academic areas I’m interested in, and working with and leading training for medical students, residents, and fellows,” he says.

Now a mentor himself, Dr. Wisotzky reminds his residents and fellows to really observe their attendings and to try and put themselves in their attendings’ shoes. “They are not so distant from you,” Dr. Wisotzky says. “Try to imagine yourself doing what they do each day. This will help you maximize your training to prepare you for what your attendings do.”

Though he always planned to attend medical school, Dr. Wisotzky majored in theater as an undergraduate. One of his theater professors once offered a piece of unexpected advice to help him prepare for his future and, in his professor’s words, to make him a better doctor. The advice was to take an improvisation class, and only later would Dr. Wisotzky fully appreciate its impact. “As a physician, we have to think so quickly on our feet and respond to a variety of unexpected situations. I truly believe that this improv class helped prepare me for the adventures each day would present,” he says.

Dr. Wisotzky serves as the residency program director for PM&R and an associate designated institutional official on MedStar Health GME’s Executive Team. He is also a subgroup leader on the MedStar Health Academic Affairs Working Group for Racial Justice, where he’s had the opportunity to listen and to learn about what residents and fellows from under-represented backgrounds need to feel supported and thrive in MedStar Health’s learning environments. In partnership with Georgetown University Medical Center, the Working Group for Racial Justice focuses on developing and implementing sustainable positive change in MedStar Health’s clinical learning environments.

Shout Out! to Chief Resident Dr. Maria Sofia Martinez Cruz

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Shout Out! to Chief Resident Dr. Maria Sofia Martinez Cruz for organizing our inaugural Women in Medicine workshop at MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center in conjunction with the ACP-Maryland Chapter Women in Medicine committee and the Chief Residents of Baltimore (CRAB) committee. This event was held in March to celebrate Women’s History Month.

We were able to gather women residents, faculty from not only the program but from other programs, and community physicians in the local area for the program. The workshop discussed “Fertility in Women Physicians,” “Approaching Opportunity in Your Career,” and “Striving for Work-life Balance.”

Anita Tammara, MD
Medical Director of the MedStar Franklin Square Primary Care Center

April 18: GME Town Hall

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Staff Profile: Meghan Shaver

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Meghan Shaver, Corporate Director of MedStar Health GME

Meghan Shaver, the Corporate Director of MedStar Health GME, has seen the health system undergo a lot of change over her 20-year tenure. Her career within GME has experienced some changes, too.

Meghan started out as the program coordinator for the psychiatry department at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. Over the course of her career, she’s had the opportunity to work in several other hospitals in the system, including Union Memorial Hospital, Harbor Hospital, and Washington Hospital Center, and she’s seen firsthand the transformation that has taken place throughout the system.

“Twenty years ago, each hospital really was doing its own thing. The way we have brought them together under one umbrella to share resources and ideas…to form a consortium and work together as a team has been really inspiring to see over the years,” she reflected.

First accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in 2017, the MedStar Health GME Consortium is one of the largest and most innovative GME programs in the country.

In Meghan’s current role as Corporate Director of MedStar Health GME, she oversees this accreditation process for MedStar Health GME Consortium’s 72 accredited programs and nine GME programs in specialties like podiatric surgery and oral and maxillofacial surgery. Meghan was instrumental in the consortium’s recent ACGME evaluation (a process GME programs must undergo every several years to maintain accreditation), in which MedStar Health GME received no citations or areas for improvement (AFIs).

In addition to ensuring that the more than 100 different resident and fellowship programs within MedStar Health GME are operating as one team, the MedStar Health GME Consortium brings other benefits to residents and fellows as well. The consortium’s medical education and clinical partnership with Georgetown University means that clinical faculty, residents, ​and fellows are the primary teachers​ and mentors for medical students at Georgetown University School of Medicine.

Depending on the time of the year, Meghan supports other needs of the MedStar Health GME team, including onboarding new residents and fellows and reviewing resident, fellow, and faculty survey results.

In her role on the Metrics and Outcomes Subcommittee of the Graduate Medical Education Committee (GMEC), Meghan also helps to guide the work of MedStar Health GME by evaluating the performance of each program and determining which ones may need additional attention.

Outside of work, Meghan enjoys spending time with her husband and kids at their home in Maryland.