Dr. faryal michaud

Dr Faryal Michaud’s career started when she turned 27 years old as a medical student at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine where she graduated in the year 2001. She completed her Internal Medicine residency in Phoenix, Arizona. All three of these years, she was voted the Resident Teacher of the year as teaching medical students was her passion.

Following residency, she was asked by her program director to work as an Academic Hospitalist, which she enjoyed very much. She later had to move to California because of her husband’s medical school training. She worked as a Hospitalist and later became board certified as a Palliative Care physician. She has been practicing Inpatient Palliative Medicine for the past 8 years.

She has most recently moved to Honolulu and continues to enjoy practicing Palliative Medicine with Hawaii Permanente Medical Group.

During the pandemic, she was feeling helpless while experiencing the angst of her colleagues who were practicing on the front lines in the East coast. She knew that they were caring for seriously ill patients and somehow did not have the right tools to educate the public or have proper time or space for those conversations themselves. It occurred to her that she could create a Podcast to address all of these important issues. This Podcast was born mid August 2020 and is titled “Write Your Last Chapter”. People from all over the US as well as around the world have been tuning in. She is getting wonderful feedback from both physicians and patients alike. Dr. Michaud is happy to relieve their suffering even by a small percentage.

At the same time, social media that had acted as an escape for many people, was starting to become a place for venting frustration and expressing a sense of doom. The amount of tension and anxiety that female physicians on different FaceBook groups were experiencing was tremendous. This made Dr. Michaud think about providing a safe support group to provide writings to help us reflect on what matters most. The group is called “Physicians Living Intentionally”. During a very short time, there are now more than 1100 members in that group who shared their deep appreciation of how the writings and images shared had significantly impacted the level of anxiety in their lives.

Dr. Michaud continues to enjoy practicing palliative medicine, teaching residents about how to care for our seriously ill or terminal patients. At the same time, she has found a way to share her tools with people all over the world so that they can have better conversations about their priorities until the very last day. Providing a support group and a blog to allow a layer of support for my colleagues during times of COVID has helped her fight her sense of helplessness as much as it has helped others.

Dr. Michaud feels it is her true duty and calling: To help us write the best last chapter of our lives no matter where we are at the moment.

 

 

2021 Women in White Coats Hero of the Year Nominees