Vice Chief, Emergency Department
NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull

Connecting with Patients

When he first became an attending emergency physician a few years ago, Dr. Ershad Elahi was focused on the purely clinical—seeing a lot of cases and getting better at treating a wide range of acute conditions in the pressured environment of a city emergency department. But over time he realized something important. “In this fast-paced, highvolume health care system we are in, compassion is something I’ve noticed as being less commonplace,” he says. “As time has gone on, I have put more value on creating relationships with patients—to making a connection with them.”

Dr. Elahi, the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, grew up in New Jersey with an interest in science and serving the public good. But he majored in economics at Duke University and it wasn’t until the summer after his sophomore year that he chose his path. That summer he had two internships—one on Wall Street, the other a humanitarian mission helping provide free medical care to the indigenous population in the Peruvian Amazon. That clarified his ambitions.

Dr. Elahi graduated from New Jersey Medical School and has served NYC Health + Hospitals ever since. He was an emergency medicine resident (and chief resident) at Bellevue, completed a fellowship in emergency ultrasound at Kings County and been an attending at Woodhull since 2013. He became vice chief of the department in 2015 and his area of expertise has made emergency ultrasound at the bedside an important tool of the hospital’s ED care.

“From the beginning of my residency, I have always had a commitment to providing care to this population and being a clinical advocate for those who otherwise may not have one,” Dr. Elahi says. “Some days we save a life or lives.” And some days “test the fortitude of the staff.” He recalls the day a few years ago when more than 30 patients came in after using the synthetic marijuana known as K2. “We were able to quickly identify that a surge was occurring and tailor clinical operations to deal with it.”

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