SAEM PULSE | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2021
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Searching for Healing and Understanding in a Time of AntiAsian Violence By Kevin Hon, DO on behalf of the SAEM Wellness Committee On Feb 16, 2021, a 52-year-old Asian woman presented to our emergency department (ED) with a laceration to her forehead. She’d been violently lifted off the ground and thrown at a metal news rack and was now in our emergency department being treated by our residents. . She was treated by my coresidents without a second thought. Even on her worst day, she insisted that we accept her Chinese New Year red money packet to thank us for treating her.
As my PGY-1 year progressed, attacks like these became more frequent and, as an Asian-American doctor, painfully more personal. An elderly Korean lady presented to our emergency department (ED) after being harassed by a group of teenagers and pushed onto a parked van. A man presented to the ED with a subdural hematoma after being assaulted in the face and found in a ditch. Was he targeted for being Asian? Not long after an elderly Filipino woman suffered
severe injuries following an unprovoked attack in Manhattan while walking to church, I treated a patient of similar demographics who sustained facial trauma from a fall while walking home from church. Was she also a victim? My heart sank when I heard about the six Asian women who were killed on March 16, 2021, in the Atlanta spa shootings. I thought of our residents, faculty, and nurses — the people I see every day, many of them of
