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Mark D. Siegel, MD: Did We Work Hard? Did We Work Together?

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Name: Mark D. Siegel, MD

Title: Associate professor and director, Medical Intensive Care Unit

Yale department: Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care

Area of expertise: Critical care

Place of birth: New York, N.Y.

Age: 42

College: Columbia College

Med School: Columbia P&S

Training: Residency: Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Fellowship: Yale University

What is most challenging to you in academic medicine? Caring for exceedingly complex, critically ill patients and their families while trying to be an outstanding teacher to house staff and students, an effective MICU director and a productive clinical researcher, all at the same time.

What is most rewarding? Knowing that our critically ill patients get the best care that can be had in the United States.

What do you like most about your practice? The opportunity to work alongside talented and enthusiastic house staff on behalf of some of the sickest and most challenging patients in the medical center.

Personal interests or pastimes: Biking, running, gardening, traveling, time spent with my wife and three daughters.

Last book read: Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, by Laurence Bergreen

What would you do personally to improve our clinical environment if you had a magic wand? I’d improve services for families who are weathering the crisis of having a family member face a life-threatening illness. Families are under an enormous amount of stress and strain and require far more support and care from members of our community than they routinely receive.

Mark D. Siegel, MDMark D. Siegel, MD, came to Yale in 1992 as a fellow in pulmonary and critical care medicine and now heads the Medical Intensive Care Unit, or MICU, at Yale-New Haven Hospital. As a YMG physician, he finds himself constantly challenged by the urgency and complexity of the cases seen in his unit, which cared for more than 1,000 patients in 2004. He was first attracted to the field, he said, “by the fact that it was so complicated and so varied, and that the people I knew in it were all extremely smart. I was also pulled in by the drama and the real-life quality of the work. It’s a field that demands that people be decisive, think on their feet and take life-and-death action.”

Given the severity of the illnesses seen in the intensive care unit, Siegel said he and his colleagues focus on solving their patients’ sometimesintractable problems, despite odds that are at times overwhelming. “That we have a 15 percent mortality rate reflects how sick the patients are and that the outcomes are related to their underlying disease,” he said. “You start to look at success and failure on a systemic level: ‘Did we work hard? Did we work together?’ And you take solace from doing all you can for your patient.”

- Originally published in the October 2005 issue of Yale Practice.

 
 
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