Misha Fotoohi, MD, is a 2023 graduate of the University of Utah’s Family Medicine Residency Program. She currently serves as an attending physician and hospitalist at a 180-bed community hospital in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The group she is part of serves other community hospitals in the region and is academically affiliated with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Fotoohi holds a junior leadership role as associate site director of hospital medicine at BID-Plymouth and is a member of the Harvard Faculty Medical Physicians Group.
Dr. Fotoohi continues to apply the skills she developed during residency to serve her unique patient population and contribute to her hospital’s culture. We recently spoke with her about her dual roles, how the residency program helped shape her career, and her advice for current residents.
Tell us about your current role and practice.
The hospital serves an older population with a lower socioeconomic status and has been a staple of the community for decades. Every day I hear stories from patients about their history and their pride in their community. It’s meaningful to be part of their lives, often the worst time of their lives, even if for a short time.
About eighty percent of my time is spent working clinically in the acute care setting and I occasionally do admitting shifts. Before moving to Plymouth, I worked night shifts half the time while living in Boston proper as my husband completed his infectious diseases fellowship.
My junior leadership position as associate site director of hospital medicine at BID-Plymouth takes up the other twenty percent of my schedule. My role helps me feel more connected both to the doctors I work with and members of the health care team in the hospital.
In what ways did your training in the Family Medicine Residency Program equip you for your current role?
Nearly all aspects of my training helped me, including the sheer clinical exposure. The curriculum was more inpatient-heavy compared to average, with the opportunity for more time on inpatient services as desired. The way the residency program approaches outpatient clinic is so important. By ramping up the number of patient encounters, you get more volume and reps, but it’s also a better representation of what clinic will feel like. This helped me identify that I preferred to work in the hospital setting and guided my job search.
How did your residency experience influence your approach to patient care and your overall practice today?
The diversity and volume of training helped me become a proficient and confident physician. There were numerous occasions where I was allowed space for autonomy and growth, such as in clinic or working overnight at our community hospital. I had opportunities to succeed and fail in a safe and controlled environment. Training both at a smaller community site and at a large academic institution provided me with a wide range of experiences that I continue to implement daily. My background in family medicine and robust outpatient training has helped me quickly learn what is appropriate for an acute level of care and what can be deferred to primary care or outpatient specialists.
How do you stay connected with your residency peers or mentors, and how has that network supported your career?
The 2023 residency class has a group chat that we used during residency, and we still use it today—sharing life updates and photos, discussing medical questions and cases. It’s hard to quantify how these relationships have helped support my career. It’s invaluable to have a robust support group and trusted colleagues you can lean on.
What advice can you offer to current residents?
Ask the attendings you admire about their practice, not just for raw information or facts. Ask what they think, why they think it, and how they approach situations. You can look up most information online, but those little pearls of wisdom that come with years of experience are often more helpful than medical knowledge alone.
Take as many opportunities as you can to learn and gain exposure from electives and subspecialty clinics to procedures and workshops. You won’t learn everything there is to know about a topic, but even brief exposure can be useful in the future.
And finally, one of my favorite pieces of advice I received during residency, from Utah’s very own Dr. Osman Sanyer, is to take a little bit of extra time to just talk to your patients. Ask them questions about their life and let them tell you about their hobbies or their family. It’ll only take a few extra minutes, and you’ll not only find that you learn more about their condition or how to help them clinically, but you really have a more pleasant and meaningful interaction—it just makes your whole day better. I still heed this advice even when I’m working 12+ hour days on seven-day stretches, and it results in me feeling more fulfilled and less burnt out.
