Page 11 - Regions Annual Report 2022

Emergency Medicine Residency 2022 Annual Report | 11
RESIDENT SPOTLIGHT
ABDIHAKIM ABDULLAHI, MD, PHARMD
Tell us about your career prior to medical school, and what made you decide to go to medical school?
Prior to medical school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I never entertained the idea of being a doctor because I knew very little about what it meant to be a doctor. I had no physicians in my family and the only physician I knew growing up was my childhood pediatrician. I never liked my pediatrician, something about the annual physical and coughing that made me not like him so medicine was out of the questions. During high school, I began to like chemistry so I went into undergrad settled on becoming a chemist. After undergrad, I pursued grad school in chemistry and started working as a quality control chemist. For one reason or another, I didn’t find working as a chemist as satisfying as I thought I would so I changed gears and went into pharmacy school because of its close relationship to chemistry. During pharmacy school, I worked in the ED alongside emergency physicians as a pharmacy student and that was my first real exposure to emergency medicine and immediately felt a pull. I applied into medical school during my final year of pharmacy because
I felt like for the first time, I knew for sure what I wanted to be. I started medical school the summer after I graduated from pharmacy school but I worked as a pharmacist and pharmacy manager at CVS during medical school working my last pharmacy shift 1 week before I started residency.
What attracted you to the Regions Emergency Medicine residency program?
Regions EM residency program felt like home. When I rotated here as a medical student, everyone was extremely kind and welcoming. Medicine can sometimes be a toxic environment especially for medical students
but during my time rotating at Regions I felt nothing but support and love. I fell in love with the supportive culture. The residents, attendings, nurses, techs, coordinators, everyone in the ED had such a friendly almost familial relationship and it was refreshing to see. Residency is stressful as it is but
I felt that the Regions EM residency leadership did everything in the power to make it as supportive as possible.
You are half way done with your residency training—at this point what are you considering for your post residency career pathway?
Still a working progress. I am leaning towards doing a toxicology fellowship. I really enjoyed my toxicology rotation during residency and I absolutely love the toxicology staff so having the honor to learn and train under them is an exciting prospect.
Anything else you would like to share with us about life, your job, etc.?
Outside of residency I keep myself busy by spending time with my family. I have 3 beautiful kids that keep me busy, an 8-year-old, 6-year-old and a feisty 2-year-old. My wife and kids are my biggest motivation and help keep me grounded when life feels overwhelming.