Spring in Baltimore offers a sense of renewal, as daffodils, tulips and hyacinths push up out of the earth, bringing a riot of color and sweet scents. At CIM, a parallel can be found in the “blooming” of two especially promising clinicians. Their commitment to humanized medicine is bringing new hope and fresh ideas to countless patients and colleagues.
The first is pulmonologist Michelle Sharp, the Mary and David Gallo CIM Scholar and Elena and Everardo Goyanes CIM Scholar, who has an exciting new role: as assistant director of CIM.
“Dr. Sharp is known for her extraordinary diagnostic acumen and bedside skills, which she demonstrated as a resident and fellow and now as co-director of the Johns Hopkins Sarcoidosis Center,” says CIM Director David Hellmann. “In addition to handling operational aspects of CIM, Michelle will take the lead in planning and executing our CIM Seminars, which feature enlightening talks by faculty and guest speakers.”
“David has asked me to think about ways to bring in the patient’s voice to our CIM Seminars,” says Sharp. She took a first step in answering that invitation with her own presentation last fall: “Sarcoidosis: What It Means to Heal.”
Sharp delivered her talk in conversation with patient Heidi Junk, a member of the Johns Hopkins Sarcoidosis Patient Advisory Board. Junk gave a moving testimony about her 30-year “rollercoaster ride” of living with the debilitating condition. She said that the care she receives from Sharp and the sarcoidosis team at Johns Hopkins has made all the difference in the world.
“One of the most healing statements I have heard is when Dr. Sharp said to me, ‘I am sorry that you’re suffering,’” Junk shared. Turning to Sharp, she added, “You really listen to what my experience is and think about how together we can figure out the next best way forward. You see me as an individual and acknowledge all of the crazy stuff going on inside of me. In the past, healing was trying to go back to what I once was, before sarcoidosis came into my life. Now what I realize is that healing is moving forward. That’s very empowering. And you and the multi-disciplinary team are a part of that healing process.”
The second faculty member whose work has taken root and is thriving is infectious disease expert Seun Falade-Nwulia, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Substance Use & Infectious Disease Care, whose efforts focus on humanizing the treatment of patients with chronic infectious diseases who are drug users.
Falade-Nwulia is the new Susan and Steven Immelt/Douglas Carroll CIM Scholar. In a CIM Seminar presentation she gave in January, she noted that she was among the first medical residents at Johns Hopkins Bayview to benefit from the Aliki Initiative, a novel medical curriculum in patient-centered care. That experience was formative, she said.
“What I learned from the Aliki Initiative, and what has stayed with me, is that people are not diseases. People are people. They have lives and if we understand their lives, we may be better positioned to impact their health,” she said.
Falade-Nwulia noted that she was particularly proud to hold a CIM Scholarship named for the late Douglas Gordon Carroll Jr., who launched the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at Baltimore City Hospitals (which later became Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center) and who enjoyed a long and esteemed career at Johns Hopkins.
“Dr. Carroll was an exemplar of humanizing medicine,” says Hellmann. “I know he would be very proud to have his name attached to the work of Seun.”
Carroll’s daughter Susan Immelt, a longtime pediatric nurse at Johns Hopkins, who together with her husband Steve Immelt funded this award, concurred. She noted that throughout her father’s career, he was devoted to caring for patients who too often went overlooked. Said Immelt, “Seun is the perfect person to be this scholar.”
