Leaders in Geriatric Emergency Medicine

Surriya Colleen Ahmad MD is currently Clinical Faculty in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU Langone Hospitals in New York City and an Attending Physician at Bellevue Hospital Center/NYC Health + Hospitals. She has been a member of SAEM and AGEM for three years, and has particularly enjoyed working with the AGEM Outreach Committee. In December 2020 she co-organized and co-hosted the first Leaders in Geriatric Emergency Medicine virtual event with the aim of generating early interest in GEM amongst medical students and residents and helping to connect them with mentors who have been successful in the field. She served on the AGEM Executive Committee as a Member At Large. She is the current Treasurer for AGEM 2022-2023. 

Between taking care of patients in both a public inner-city Level 1 Trauma Center and Tertiary care center in residency and having an octogenarian father and nonagenarian grandmother who she has watched navigate the sometimes treacherous walls of an Emergency Department from the lens of a patient their age, she grew interested in how we can best optimize the care of older adults in the ED. In addition, her interest areas lie in using tools to improve communication with older adults and their families, geriatric mental health, decreasing loneliness and social isolation in older adults, health disparities in geriatric patients, physician wellness, streamlining transitions of care, geriatric ED accreditation best care practices, as well as enhancing diversity in the field of Geriatric Emergency Medicine.