SPOTLIGHT
STORYTELLING AS A POWERFUL TEACHING TOOL An Interview With Geriatric EM Expert, Shan Liu, MD, SD
Shan Liu, MD, SD is an attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, her doctorate in science in health policy from Harvard School of Public Health and completed her residency at the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency Program. She is currently an associate professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and the MGH Geriatric Emergency Medicine Division Fellowship Director. She is past president of SAEM’s Academy of Geriatric Emergency Medicine (AGEM) and has served on the executive board of the American College of Emergency Physicians’ Geriatric Emergency Medicine Section and the International Federation of Emergency Medicine Geriatric Emergency Medicine Special Interest Group. She is considered the international expert in the emergency department (ED) management of fall patients and leads the Geriatric Emergency Medicine Guidelines group. She has authored publications in U.S. News and World Report, CNN, and the forthcoming book, Masked Hero: How WuLien Teh Invented the Mask and Ended an Epidemic (Publisher Candlewick Press/MIT kids).
SAEM PULSE | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2022
Dr. Wu-Lien Teh: Inventor and "Plague Fighter"
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During COVID lockdown Dr. Liu and her daughter, Kaili, wrote a book entitled, Masked Hero: How Wu Lien-teh Invented the Mask and Ended an Epidemic. The book tells the true story of a boy who loved science and when a deadly disease came to China in 1910, how he used his learning, courage, and quick thinking to invent a mask that quickly ended the outbreak, saving countless lives in China and around the world. That boy was Dr. Liu’s great-grandfather, a physician renowned for his work in public health and particularly, as the “Plague Fighter” who stamped out the Manchurian plague of 1910–11 using the same precautions (wearing masks and restricting travel) taken during the COVID-19 pandemic more than 100 years later. The mask he invented was the Wu mask, the precursor of today's N95 mask. Dr. Wu-Lien Teh was also the first Malayan and the first Chinese-heritage person nominated to receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1935.
