Program Directory, Emergency Medicine Residency
Simulation Center at NYC Health + Hospitals/Coney Island

Finding Joy in ED Simulation

Some of Dr. Regina Hammock’s earliest memories are of reading— and memorizing—a set of medical encyclopedias her mother bought. “I remember pulling them out to diagnose my family’s ailments,” she says. From then on, her path was set. Now she has a number of roles that fulfill her lifelong passion to be a doctor who advocates for her patients and a teacher who helps advance the field.Dr. Hammock, a veteran emergency physician at NYC Health + Hospitals/Coney Island, found a new outlet for her calling when she began teaching at the Simulation Center, a facility serving the entire health system where simulation-based education is used to advance patient safety and carry out quality-improvement initiatives.

Dr. Hammock has taught several emergency medicine courses since joining the Simulation Center faculty in 2013 and she has gained a reputation as an exceptional and popular teacher. Dr. Hammock returns the compliment: The center’s staff “opened my eyes to simulation in health care,” she says, “and I’ve used what I learned to bring back to my ED.” She recalls an instance four years ago when the center’s support made a difference in a difficult case: “I called on them and they helped us get back on track. I don’t think I could form these kinds of relationships in any other system.”

Teaching at the Simulation Center was also a catalyst for what Dr. Hammock considers her proudest accomplishment: starting an emergency medicine residency at Coney Island in 2015. “It’s a small program, only 16 residents, but they have made a significant impact on the care we provide to the community,” she says.

Dr. Hammock is a graduate of New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and chose emergency medicine because she considers it, among all the subspecialties, “the closest to what practicing medicine is all about. The ED is the place where I can take on all people and practice patient advocacy, sometimes for people who have never experienced it. This gives me joy.”

Meet all the Doctors’ Day Honorees ➤