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Education

Full-Circle Healing

A doctor’s education in trauma care began in college

By AMY PATUREL, MS, MPH

When Nicole Fierro, MD, was a little girl, she set her sights on becoming a doctor. Her parents were not in the medical field. Her mother worked for a wireproduction plant in South El Monte and her father was in construction. In fact, no one she knew had been to college.

As a Latina who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley with four brothers, Fierro was exposed to the effects of gang violence and trauma from an early age. She also recognized the health disparities within her community. “I knew that minorities were at an increased risk of experiencing gun violence, trauma and assault,” says Fierro, now 30. And she knew she wanted to be part of the solution.

The doorway to her future career opened during Fierro’s sophomore year at UCLA when she learned about CedarsSinai’s Trauma Research Program (TRP) through a student listserv. Students in TRP attend weekly lectures, present research on relevant surgical topics and get on-the-ground training in the medical field. Fierro applied, and the TRP team selected her to join their ranks.

As a member of TRP, Fierro gained a front-row seat to clinical research at one of the top Level I trauma centers in the country. (continued on page 35)

Dr. Nicole Fierro trained in CedarsSinai’s Trauma Research Program and now mentors the next generation of students.

Faculty News

Medical residents Akbarshakh Akhmerov, MD, and Arjan Gower, MD, won the 2021 CedarsSinai Rubenstein Award for Excellence in Resident Research based on their studies of inflammation and pancreatic cancer, respectively. The annual award, which carries a $3,000 cash prize for each winner, fosters clinical and translational research, leads to enriched knowledge, and encourages career development of our residents as investigators.

Harriet U. Aronow, PhD, professor of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, has been named an honorary fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. With a 40-year career in applied health services and evaluation research, she works to develop nursing-sensitive performance indicators and a benchmark data registry for ambulatory care nursing.

Peter Chen, MD, director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, has been named the Medallion Chair in Molecular Medicine. A leading authority in the field of lung injury and repair, Chen has made seminal discoveries in understanding lung-repair mechanisms and has applied these findings to patient care at CedarsSinai since 2013.

The 2021 Cedars-Sinai Clinical Fellows Awards for Excellence in Research were presented to Smidt Heart Institute fellows Jae Hyung Cho, MD, PhD, for his work on the role of inflammation in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, and Lily K. Stern, MD, for her study of the impact of the 2018 revision to the United Network for Organ Sharing’s donor heart allocation system.

Sumeet S. Chugh, MD, the Pauline and Harold Price Chair in Cardiac Electrophysiology Research, medical director of the Heart Rhythm Center and director of the Center for Cardiac Arrest Prevention, has been elected president of the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society.

John P. Chute, MD, has been named the Linda Ostrowski Chair in Hematology/Oncology in honor of Barry Rosenbloom, MD. He is director of Hematology and Cellular Therapy in the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Cancer, director of the Center for Myelodysplastic Diseases Research, and associate director of the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute.

Stephen Freedland,

MD, director of the Center for Integrated Research in Cancer and Lifestyle and the Warschaw, Robertson, Law Families Chair in Prostate Cancer, has been inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation. The society supports the scientific efforts, educational needs and clinical aspirations of physicianscientists to improve the health of all people. David Gibb, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Division of Transfusion Medicine, received the 2021 National Blood Foundation Award for Innovative Research.

Anita Girard, DNP, RN, has been appointed chief nursing officer for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and will manage nursing operations across the center. She joined Cedars-Sinai in April 2020 as vice president of nursing; this new position is an evolution of her previous role.

Irene Kim, MD, director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center and surgical director of Kidney Transplantation, has received the Outstanding Women in Healthcare Award from the American Liver Foundation. Kim was also elected to the council of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and to the board of the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Jayoung Kim, PhD, professor of Surgery and Biomedical Sciences, has received the silver President’s Volunteer Service Award for her contributions and dedication to promoting health equity, diversity and inclusion. Kim was awarded a certificate of achievement in September from President Joe Biden.

Ophir Klein, MD, PhD, has been appointed inaugural executive director of Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s, vice dean for Children’s Services and the David and Meredith Kaplan Distinguished Chair in Children’s Health. Klein previously served as chief of the Division of Medical Genetics, chair of the Division of Craniofacial Anomalies and director of the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco. An internationally recognized innovator in pediatrics and genetics, Klein has received the Director’s New Innovator and Sustaining Outstanding Achievement in Research awards from the National Institutes of Health as well as the E. Mead Johnson Award from the Society for Pediatric Research. He has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, American Society for Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Errol P. Lobo, MD, PhD, has joined Cedars-Sinai as chair of the Department of Anesthesiology. A respected academic leader, anesthesiologist and diversity advocate, he was previously vice president of Perioperative Services, president of the medical staff, and professor of Clinical Anesthesia and Perioperative Care at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

Shelly C. Lu, MD, director of the Karsh Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology in the Department of Medicine and the Women’s Guild Chair in Gastroenterology, received the 2021 Cedars-Sinai Prize for Research in Scientific Medicine (PRISM), an annual award that recognizes a scientific breakthrough or critical medical insight made within the past five years by a Cedars-Sinai faculty member. Lu was honored for her translational studies revealing novel molecular mechanisms contributing to liver disease and for innovative approaches to therapy for fatty liver disease and cancer.

David Marshall, JD,

DNP, RN, has been named the James R. Klinenberg, MD, and Lynn Klinenberg Linkin Chair in Nursing in honor of Linda Burnes Bolton. Marshall, who has more than three decades of healthcare experience— from improving nursingleadership proficiency and fostering innovation to championing compassionate care—is senior vice president, chief nursing executive and chair of the Department of Nursing at CedarsSinai.

Shlomo Melmed, MB,

ChB, executive vice president of Academic Affairs, dean of the medical faculty, and the Helene A. and Philip E. Hixon Distinguished Chair in Investigative Medicine, has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the Transatlantic Alliance Award. The prestigious joint award of the Endocrine Society and European Society of Endocrinology recognizes an international leader who has

made significant advancements in endocrinology research through work and collaboration in both the United States and Europe.

Russell Metcalfe-

Smith, MSc, director of the Women’s Guild Simulation Center for Advanced Clinical Skills, has been named a fellow of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare Academy and was certified as an advanced healthcare simulation educator and simulation operations specialist, becoming the first person in the world to achieve all three designations.

Sukhmani Padda, MD, has been named director of Thoracic Medical Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Cancer. Her research focuses on therapies for thoracic cancers, improving treatment for genomic subsets of lung cancer and rare thoracic tumors. She also studies tumor biomarkers to determine the best treatments for patients. Previously, she was an assistant professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

Zaldy Tan, MD, MPH, has been named the Carmen and Louis Warschaw Chair in Neurology. A leading memory and geriatric medicine specialist and dementia investigator, Tan is medical director of the Jona Goldrich Center for Alzheimer’s and Memory Disorders and director of the Bernard and Maxine Platzer Lynn Family Memory and Healthy Aging Program.

Alfredo Trento, MD— director emeritus of Cardiothoracic Surgery, vice chair of Outreach and Business Development for Cardiac Surgery at the Smidt Heart Institute, and the Estelle, Abe and Marjorie Sanders Chair in Cardiac Surgery—received Cedars-Sinai’s Pioneer in Medicine Award for 2021. The annual honor goes to physicians who have played major roles at the medical center and gained national recognition for their accomplishments. Trento is an international leader in minimally invasive heart surgery, particularly robotically assisted repairs of the mitral valve, and is largely responsible for leading Cedars-Sinai’s performance of more heart transplants than anywhere else in the country.

Jennifer Van Eyk, PhD, the Erika J. Glazer Chair in Women’s Heart Health and director of the Advanced Clinical Biosystems Research Institute, was listed as one of the top 100 analytical chemists in the world in 2021. The annual list published by The Analytical Scientist celebrates the world’s most influential analytical scientists.

Infectious disease specialist Phillip C. Zakowski, MD, received Cedars-Sinai’s third annual Master Clinician Award. The award recognizes a member of the medical staff who has made clinical and research contributions at Cedars-Sinai and in the national or international medical communities. “Trauma is a disease, just like diabetes and colon cancer,” says Eric J. Ley, MD, director of TRP. “We teach students how we use the literature to guide decisions we make as trauma surgeons by involving them in research.”

Fierro’s first task with TRP was to collect data on the development of blood clots so doctors could devise strategies to prevent them. “We reviewed patients’ vital signs, medications and medical devices and built a giant database of variables to help uncover meaningful associations,” says Fierro, who had opportunities to formally present her research findings.

When she shadowed physicians during their clinical rounds, Fierro wore a short white coat— given to all program participants— over her regular clothes. “That felt really cool,” she says. “Even though most of what the physicians said went over my head, I had a sense of hopefulness that someday I would be part of the conversation.”

Fierro was actively involved in TRP throughout her undergraduate career, first as a student and later as a student leader, when Ley charged her with recruiting new TRP participants. “My only requirement is that student leaders select a diverse group of students who aren’t all 4.0 kids,” says Ley, who has invited more than 15 TRP students to serve as co-authors on peer-reviewed scientific papers during his decade at the program’s helm.

As part of her work with the program, Fierro led TRP meetings, met one-on-one with surgical residents, presented TRP research at national conferences and gained a big-picture view of what it’s like to be a trauma surgeon. “Once, I shadowed Dr. Ley on his trauma rounds

(continued from page 33) and saw a patient who had just had a craniotomy—part of his skull was missing,” she says. If she had any lingering doubt, that experience confirmed her desire to pursue a career in trauma medicine. Since Fierro didn’t know anyone in the medical field, she relied on Ley and her fellow TRP members to guide her through the medical school application process. That extra support is vital. Data shows that more than 60% of TRP graduates go on to medical school. “The program is really what the students make of it—and most students are remarkably successful,” Fierro says. “It offers them the opportunity to explore medicine in a way that usually isn’t an option for those without a medical degree.” TRP was just the beginning of Fierro’s time at Cedars-Sinai. During her fourth year of medical school at the University of Southern California, she participated in a rotation at Cedars-Sinai and then matched here. Now Fierro serves as a third-year general surgery resident mentoring the next generation of TRP students—and has earned a longer white coat. Her research focuses on whether chest compressions for resuscitation become futile after a certain age or whether high mortality after chest compressions occurs for all ages. “Successful trauma care hinges on collecting data so we can achieve better outcomes for all of our patients, regardless of their demographics and socioeconomic status,” Fierro says. “It’s rewarding to be part of a team that sees every patient as a human being who is in pain and who also has family members who love them—especially when I know that we can make a difference for people like the ones who surrounded me when I was growing up.”