Elizabeth Chang, PGY-3

Hey! I’m Elizabeth, an intern in the combined internal medicine and psychiatry program. I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and raised in Toronto and then Seattle. I’ve spent most of my life in Seattle, including going to both college and medical school there. My mom is a lung biologist, and growing up, I spent many afternoons after school helping her out in the lab, so I always thought I would follow her footsteps into biological research. Midway through undergrad, I realized that I wanted to actually work with the patients who my research was supposed to benefit. The University of Washington physicians who I interacted with seemed like the kinds of doctors I wanted to become, and I was lucky enough to go to medical school there after a gap year. 

Due to the focus of my research background, I found myself gravitating toward internal medicine during my didactic years of medical school. I thought psychiatry was interesting on an intellectual level, but never thought I would choose it as a career. Psychiatry was my first rotation of third year, and I fell in love with it. When I had my internal medicine rotation and loved it, too, I felt stuck, because at the time I had no idea med-psych existed. A few months later, I was complaining to a friend about the impossible decision I had to make and she promptly changed my life with a “No need to be so angsty about it, you can do both.” Through the few combined-trained faculty at UW, I started meeting more med-psych people around the country, and finally felt like I’d found my place in medicine, among folks who felt that integrated care was the best way forward in an unjust and complex healthcare system. I knew that combined training would prepare me to serve the underserved and under-resourced patient populations I had come to love during medical school, both in Seattle and out in the five state region where I did my rotations. I don’t exactly know where I want my career to take me, and I have five years of combined training to figure it out, but I know that doing my med psych training at Emory opens up a world of possibilities. 

When I started researching med psych programs, Emory stood out immediately. I knew I wanted a change of scenery, and what could be more of a change of scenery than moving to the literal other corner of the country? Having done medical school at an institution that had a county/public/safety net hospital, a university hospital, and a VA as training sites, I knew I wanted that to be part of my residency training. At Emory, we get to train at Grady, EUH, and the VA, so I knew that doing residency here would expose me to an unparalleled diversity of patients, health systems, and cases. While doing an away rotation here, I also found that the people who make up the psychiatry, medicine, and med psych program here are some of the coolest people I could hope to work with and learn from. After that away rotation (in sweltering August, of all times) I also fell in love with Atlanta. I am thrilled to get to be here for my residency! 

I am currently rotating on the consult-liaison service at Grady, our big county/safety net hospital. 

6:40: Get up, get ready to bike over to Grady by 7:40. I live a short 10 minute ride from Grady, which makes my commute very nice, but a little less pleasant during the current summer months.

8:00: Roll in to the consult office, log in and chart check the patients I'm following. If I'm the chief for the day (meaning that I hold the consult pager) then I'll start fielding consult calls from teams. At this point I'll also go around and see my old patients and any new patients I've been assigned along with the med students following those patients.

10:00: We table round as a team in the consults office. The consult team is pretty big, with several different attendings who each cover different days, 2 Emory psych residents, 1 Morehouse psych resident, 1 neurology resident and a few medical and PA students. We try to be efficient so that we can see patients again together if need be and call teams back with recommendations before the afternoon.

Noonish: We break for lunch and the students go to their noon learning conference. 

For the rest of the day the team splits up and we see and staff consults as they come in. We take consults until 4:30pm, so the chief of the day always stays until then, but if things are winding down earlier than that, then the other team members may take off earlier. 

4:30 (at the latest): Sign out the pager to overnight coverage and head home. Most days I get to just unwind, which is a plus side of this rotation--you're not on call when you go home! I've been enjoying taking walks on the Freedom Parkway Trail, which connects to the Atlanta Beltline, as well as painting (a new hobby). 

Trying to move across the country during COVID times made for an interesting apartment-hunting experience. We basically knew that we would be signing a lease sight-unseen. Thankfully I had been here before and at least knew some of the neighborhoods. I knew I wanted to live pretty close to Grady, and not too far from the other two hospitals by car. The location where I live now is close enough that I can walk to Grady every day, which everyone else thinks is ridiculous but I actually quite enjoy. Walking to the hospital in the morning helps me wake up, and helps me clear my head on the way back. It is getting really hot out now, so I might take a break from walking during the peak of summer and get back to it once it’s at least cooled down to below 90. Living in the heart of the city means that all the restaurants, stores, and breweries are not too far, and as an intern, the convenience is much appreciated. 

A lot of this is different right now because of COVID, but much of this can still be accessed, just in different ways, i.e. takeout instead of dining in, distanced patio seating at breweries, etc.

The food scene is great here. There’s the kind of stuff that is typically associated with the South, like bbq and fried chicken and whatnot, and there’s also an amazing diversity of food in the different enclaves around the metro area. The Buford Highway area in Doraville is Asian food heaven, and the Indian food around here is amazing, too. The list of restaurants I want to try is forever growing. 

If you like beer, there are a ton of incredible breweries around here. They mostly have sizeable outdoor spaces where you can hang out, and most have good food, too! 

Atlanta is incredibly lush, and the green areas in and around the city are great for hiking. You can stay as close as inside the perimeter or choose to drive a couple hours, and either way there are many trails to choose from. 

I am a very indecisive person who ended up in a career where I have to make hundreds of decisions every day. Funny how life works, right? So I understand how the choice of residency, which in itself involves thousands of smaller decisions, can make you squirm, especially since COVID turned the whole process upside down. People gave me a lot of advice during the process, and what gave me the most comfort was the reassurance that for the most part, save for some obvious exceptions, whatever decision you make will not be a “wrong decision.” No matter what, you will get through training. No matter what, that training will be challenging in various and differing ways. We make our best guesses based on the best information we can gather, but it is impossible to predict the future...so don’t expect yourself to do so. If you’re reading this and thinking of going into psychiatry, you are already headed in the right direction. (But that’s just my personal bias.) Try not to stress too much about the rest.