Page 15 - Morehouse School of Medicine Magazine

COVID-19

MSM physicians share

their experiences

serving on the front

lines of an emerging

pandemic at Grady
Memorial Hospital.

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to sweep the
United States last spring, physicians from More-
house School of Medicine quickly mobilized to
treat hundreds of Georgia’s sickest patients at
Grady Memorial Hospital.
Dr. Eric Flenaugh, chief and director of pulmo-
nary and critical care and interventional pulmo-
nary medicine at Grady, said MSM physicians’
familiarity with African Americans’ COVID
mortality risk factors like cardiovascular disease
and diabetes has given them a higher awareness
of patients’ needs and vulnerabilities. That is
helping them save lives.
Along with their Grady colleagues from the
Emory University School of Medicine, MSM
physicians hit the front lines, working brutal
hours to treat and save many patients debilitated
by high fever, their lungs struggling to take in
oxygen, some of them with kidneys failing.
“We have a commitment to health equity
Left to right: Dr. Gregory Antoine,
senior associate dean of clinical affairs here—we work in a hospital where we have a
and chief medical officer at MSM; Dr. large population of African American patients,”
Yolanda Wimberly, associate dean of Dr. Flenaugh said. “We saw how a disproportion-
clinical affairs at MSM; Dr. Eric Flenaugh, ate number of African Americans are affected.”
chief and director of pulmonary
and critical care and interventional
pulmonary medicine at Grady.

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