Fireside Chat - March 2010



Fireside Chat with Dr. Amy K. Madden, DMS '03
and Dr. Timothy T. Pieh, DMS '03

"Two Docs, Two Kids—Finding Balance while Serving the Community: Practicing Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine in Rural Maine"

Drs. Madden and Pieh spoke to the gathered audience about their individual and shared paths towards rural medicine and raising a family in the process. Their chat was full of great advice and self effacing humor that brought smiles to the faces of everyone. Dr. Madden practices family medicine at Belgrade Regional Health Center and Dr. Pieh practices emergency medicine at MaineGeneral Medical Center.

Fireside Chat with Dr. Scott D. Krugman, DMS '95, MS, FAAP

"From Community Service to Community Pediatrics - How to be an Advocate for your Patients"

Dr. Scott Krugman is the Chairman of Pediatrics at Franklin Square Hospital in Baltimore, MD--one of the youngest in its history. In his fireside chat, Dr. Krugman spoke about his lifelong passion for helping children. That passion he partially attributes to being the third generation of pediatricians in his family: both his father and grandfather were also pediatricians.

In caring for children, Dr. Krugman also sees his role as one of advocacy for their issues. During his residency at Johns Hopkins, he and several other colleagues started a child protection and advocacy program to call attention to the over 1.2 million children in Maryland in need of those services.. After seeing five very serious head trauma cases in too short a time span, in 2000 he worked to start a child protection team in his own hospital. The program now 10 years old, followed a successful NYC model to assist in the emergency room, at the first point of care, for such patients and includes a social worker (who can evaluate the case for possible abuse), as well as a pediatric specialty. Consequently, afer treating the injuries, the team can consider any needs for prevention or followup. Dr. Krugman pointed out that as of November 2009, Child Protection Advocacy is now a subspecialty.

In his pitch for pediatrics as an excellent professional choice for his audience of future physicians, he gave three "selling points":

  1. In pediatrics, "you get to do the whole thing."
  2. "Kids are great; they are resilient; they bounce."
  3. The field of pediatrics offers a broad range of subspecialties.