COVID-19, Racial Justice Challenge New Cedars-Sinai Residents

Cedars-Sinai, Meet Our New Residents:

Three of Cedars-Sinai's new residents, from left to right, Shruthi Nammalwar, MD, Jayne Caron, MD, and Maurice Turner, MD. Photo by Cedars-Sinai.

[T]hese are far from normal times. The COVID-19 pandemic first disrupted the final months of many of the new residents’ medical school educations, and now is altering their experiences at the medical center. ...

COVID-19 ... isn’t the only big issue on the minds of the new arrivals. Residents are keenly aware that we are living through a possible inflection point in American history. Even as the nation struggles with the pandemic, which has disproportionately affected minority patients and raised the issue of health equity, Americans are reckoning with calls for social justice from protestors outraged by police killings of Black Americans, including George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“These protests are inseparable from the start of my career,” said Jayne Caron, MD, a new resident in obstetrics and gynecology who attended medical school at New York University.

In fact, social justice concerns helped Caron choose to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology. Along with working at a free medical clinic serving many low-income and undocumented immigrant patients during medical school, Caron also participated in research on gender-based violence.

Caron also was one of the NYU volunteers who opted to finish medical school slightly ahead of schedule so she could help treat COVID-19 patients at the height of the crisis in New York.