Emily Cooperstein, MD, honored for teaching
When Emily Cooperstein, MD, was summoned for a meeting with her colleagues Nick DeBlasio, MD, MEd, and Melissa Klein, MD, MEd, she feared she might be in trouble.
“I’m a very sarcastic person who likes to have fun in the workplace,” she joked. “I figured it was only a matter of time.”
But they had good news to deliver—she was named the winner of the Cincinnati Pediatric Society’s Ray Baker Teaching Award, which she’ll receive at the Founder’s Award Ceremony and Dinner on November 17.
Cooperstein is an attending physician in the Pediatric Primary Care Center at Burnet Campus. She spends about 50 percent of her time precepting with residents and teaching medical students, while the rest of her time is devoted to seeing patients. She loves every bit of it.
“My mother is a pediatrician, and my father is a radiologist, so I grew up hearing about the interesting cases they saw and seeing the joy they got out of their work,” she said. “It’s what inspired me to pursue a medical career.”
Cooperstein does her best to help residents learn the intricacies of medical decision-making. Patients come with a lot of social circumstances—lack of transportation, lapsed insurance or frequent changes of address—that you have to navigate. On the inpatient side, there are social workers and care teams to help. But in the outpatient setting, the challenges are amplified, she said. “We’re supposed to be their medical home, so our job is not only to treat their illnesses but to address the surrounding issues that can interfere with their care. Residents’ time in the PPC is a crash course in the dynamics of the community.”
To help residents transition to full-fledged practitioners, Cooperstein offers support, but she also steps back to let them figure it out on their own. “In the clinic, things happen fast. Patients are sick, and their situations can be complicated. At some point, you have to be confident enough to make decisions about what’s best for the patient without a supervisor’s validation,” she explained.
Giving residents time to problem-solve sometimes takes a bit longer than if they were just handed the answer, but it’s worth it. “Our mission in the PPC is to teach,” she said, “and that’s what we’re set up to do.”
Cooperstein is thankful for the mentors in her life, like her parents, DeBlasio, Klein and Joe Real, MD, MEd, an attending physician and good friend from their student days at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “All of us only get to the place we’re at because of good teachers,” she said.
The learning hasn’t stopped for Cooperstein. The residents teach her as much, if not more, than she teaches them. She said she is humbled and honored to have been chosen by them for the Ray Baker Teaching Award. “I look at the past winners and the people I work with every day, and I feel lucky to be in such a supportive environment. The PPC makes it easy to be a good teacher. It’s a great place to work.”
