Virginia Apgar was an American physician, obstetrical anesthesiologist and medical researcher, best known as the inventor of the Apgar score, a way to quickly assess the health of a newborn child immediately after birth in order to combat infant mortality. In 1952, she developed the 10-point Apgar score to assist physicians and nurses in assessing the status of newborns. Given at one minute and five minutes after birth, the Apgar test measures a child's breathing, skin color, reflexes, motion, and heart rate. A friend said, "She probably did more than any other physician to bring the problem of birth defects out of back rooms." She was a leader in the fields of anesthesiology and teratology, and introduced obstetrical considerations to the established field of neonatology.
Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field of medicine which includes the humanities, social science and the arts and their application to medical education and practice.
Virginia Kneeland Frantz was a pathologist and educator credited with a series of discoveries in the study of thyroid, breast and pancreatic tumors.
Allen Richard Selzer was an American surgeon and author.
Rita Kaplan Gollin (1928–2022) was a professor of English and a scholar of American literature.
Christine K. Cassel is a leading expert in geriatric medicine, medical ethics and quality of care. She is planning dean of the new Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. Until March 2016, she was president and CEO of the National Quality Forum. Previously, Cassel served as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the ABIM Foundation.
Carola Blitzman Eisenberg was an Argentine-American psychiatrist who became the first woman to hold the position of dean of students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1978 to 1990, she was the dean of student affairs at Harvard Medical School (HMS). She has for a long time been lecturer in the newly renamed Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at HMS. She was also both a founding member of Physicians for Human Rights and an honorary psychiatrist with the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, a longstanding position there.
Narrative Medicine is the discipline of applying the skills used in analyzing literature to interviewing patients. The premise of narrative medicine is that how a patient speaks about his or her illness or complaint is analogous to how literature offers a plot with characters and is filled with metaphors, and that becoming conversant with the elements of literature facilitates understanding the stories that patients bring. Narrative Medicine is a diagnostic and comprehensive approach that utilizes patients' narratives in clinical practice, research, and education to promote healing. Beyond attempts to reach accurate diagnoses, it aims to address the relational and psychological dimensions that occur in tandem with physical illness. Narrative medicine aims not only to validate the experience of the patient, it also encourages creativity and self-reflection in the physician.
Marianne J. Legato is an American physician, author, lecturer, and renowned expert in gender-specific medicine, which focuses on understanding how biological sex and gender influence human health and the experience of diseases.
Linda P. Fried is an American geriatrician and epidemiologist, who is also the first female Dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Her research career is focused on frailty, healthy aging, and how society can successfully transition to benefit from an aging population.
Florence Pat Haseltine is a U.S. physician, biophysicist, reproductive endocrinologist, journal editor, novelist, inventor, and advocate for women's health. She has been diagnosed with dyslexia. She built a diverse career in medicine. An associate professor at Yale University, her work specializes in obstetrics and gynecology as well as women's rights and gender bias in medicine. While at Yale, Haseltine established the embryology laboratory, which was one of the early labs to have a successful IVF baby. The Microscope used in the laboratory is now in Historical Collections of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
Dr. Velma Scantlebury GCM also Velma Scantlebury-White is a Barbadian-born American transplant surgeon. She was the first Black woman transplant surgeon of the United States. She has received many honors in her career, having been named to both the "Best Doctors in America" and "Top Doctors in America" lists multiple times.
Eve Elizabeth Slater is an American physician who served as the United States Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2003. Slater received her B.A from Vassar College in 1967 and M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1971. She completed residency in internal medicine and fellowship in cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA.In 1976, she was appointed the Chief Resident in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, the first woman to appointed to this position. Dr. Slater is currently Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S), where she has taught for over 35 years. She is board certified in internal medicine and cardiology and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology.(FACC). At MGH, she led the Hypertension Unit, as Assistant Professor of Medicine. Harvard Medical School.
Alma Dea Morani (1907–2001) was a plastic surgeon. She is widely accepted as being the first female plastic surgeon in the United States and was the first female member accepted into the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons.
Lila Amdurska Wallis was a Polish-born American physician who was board-certified in internal medicine, hematology, and endocrinology/metabolism; the only doctor in the United States to be board-certified in all three specialties. Wallis developed a new methodology to safer gynecological examinations for patients that became the nationally accepted model throughout medical schools in the United States. Additionally, she founded and became the first president of the National Council on Women's Health, and created the Office of Women in Medicine at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in 1982.
Harriet Pearson Dustan (1920–1999) was an American physician who is known for her pioneering contributions to effective detection and treatment of hypertension. She was the first woman to serve on the Board of Governors of the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Margaret E. Grigsby was born on January 16, 1923, in Prairie View, Texas, to John Richard and Lee (Hankins) Grigsby. She was an American physician, noteworthy as the first African American woman to become a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the first woman to preside over a major medical division at Howard University Hospital. Grigsby was best known as a Physician of Internal Medicine, with a speciality in Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease practicing both in the United States and Africa. Grigsby died on June 24, 2009, at the age of 86 at Howard University Hospital, Washington, D.C.
Katrina Alison Armstrong is an American internist. She is the chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Armstrong is the first woman to lead Columbia's medical school and medical center. Previously, she was the first woman to hold the position of Physician-in-Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2013 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.
Dr. Christine E. Haycock was an American nurse and surgeon who served as a colonel in the United States Army Reserve, and as a professor of surgery and Director of Emergency Services at the New Jersey Medical School.
Carol Cooperman Nadelson is an American psychiatrist. In 1984, she was elected the first female president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
