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November 2010

Farzad Moazed, MD

Why did you choose Northwestern for residency?

I had never even been to the Midwest before I applied on a whim to Northwestern for medical school.  When I interviewed, I completely fell in love with the school and to the surprise of most of my friends and family, made the move to Chicago.  During my clerkships at NMH, I had the opportunity to observe how successful, friendly and happy the internal medicine residents were.  When it came time to make my rank list, I thought that Northwestern offered the perfect blend of clinical training, research opportunities and departmental support while maintaining a friendly atmosphere that made coming to work more enjoyable. Ultimately, these qualities made the decision to stay at Northwestern a rather easy one.

What are your clinical and research interests?

I plan to pursuing a career in pulmonary/critical care medicine.  I enjoy the complexity of the field as well as the opportunity to help the sickest of patients. During residency, I worked with Drs. Sznajder and Wunderink on a number of projects involving both basic science and clinical research. Recently I finished a project investigating the use of a rounding checklist to help improve outcomes in the MICU. As part of the project, we worked closely with hospital administration, which provided a broader perspective on how a big academic medical center like NMH functions. 

While so much goes into becoming a great physician, I think one of the keys is learning to strike a delicate balance between confidence and humility.  You have to be confident enough to make difficult clinical decisions, yet humble enough to question your decisions and change a course of action when the clinical picture dictates.

Tell us more about the Excellence in Process Improvement Award your team received.

Our project involved instituting a multidisciplinary rounding checklist for all patients in the Medical Intensive Care Unit. The checklist targeted areas known to be important to providing the highest level of patient care, including duration of central lines, foley catheters and empiric antibiotics, compliance with DVT and GI prophylaxis and the use of a ventilatory bundle for weaning. In addition to the checklist, a prompting resident, whose job was to ensure that the medical team addressed all checklist parameters, was present on rounds. Analysis after 3 months showed significantly improved quality outcomes for the group using a checklist with a prompter compared to a control group.