Audrey Lam

Audrey Lam is a second-year medical student at the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine and a graduate of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. During her four years as an EMT with USC Emergency Medical Services (EMSC), Audrey served as the associate director, implemented a geriatric curriculum, and led EMTs in teaching first aid at a retirement community—a first in EMSC’s history. Audrey's passions in gerontology and EMS led me to join Cedars-Sinai’s Geriatric ED Quality Improvement Committee towards GED accreditation. Reflecting upon her ED volunteer experience, Audrey identified ways to optimize our volunteer structure to better fulfill older patients’ needs. Audrey collaborated with interdisciplinary healthcare leaders to innovate Cedars-Sinai’s first age-friendly volunteer program and presented at ACEP and to the Institute of Healthcare Improvement on how our 3,600 hours of supportive interventions decreased restraint usage and calmed agitated patients. Audrey learned that collaborative committees, like these, are capable of shifting entire cultures and mobilizing resources to structurally improve care for marginalized communities. Audrey has additionally presented at the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation Conference for three years about age-friendly, culturally-sensitive EMS care. As the recipient of the NIA-funded Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) grant at UCLA, she researched ethnogeriatrics with Dr. David Reuben and was selected to be their 2024 Murray H. Neidorf MSTAR Scholar. Audrey is grateful and excited for the opportunity to collaborate and advance age-friendly care for underrepresented communities in emergency medicine across medical schools.