RUBBING ELBOWS AT MSM

Recently I attended the National Medical Association (NMA) annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia as a media guest of Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM). With my camera in hand, I popped in and out of medical talks, poster sessions, and the exhibit hall to learn more about MSM’s faculty and staff efforts to advance health equity.

I must admit that I’m a bit of a healthcare nerd. I get stoked when I “rub elbows” with people who are doing the courageous and challenging work to fix broken healthcare systems. One of my biggest fan girl moments, for example, was meeting former HHS Deputy Secretary Dr. Karen DeSalvo, who is now Google’s Chief Healthcare Officer. When she gave me a pair of #pinksocks, a symbolic gift given to healthcare champions, I (professionally) swooned.

Given this, you can imagine that I was thrilled to rub elbows with one of Morehouse School of Medicine’s rock star faculty physicians, Dr. Folashade Omole, who serves as Chair of the Family Medicine Department. Dr. Omole gave a talk for the lifestyle medicine track titled “Can You Feel the Chi?”

Only a few minutes into her talk. Dr. Omole jogged off the stage and worked her way through the audience, demonstrating how to check for pressure points on patients. She excitedly leapt from here to there, with smiling eyes and a great sense of humor. Out of the many talks I’ve attended in my career, hers was the most fun to watch. When I call her a rock star, I mean it—her crowd work was awesome!

Later that afternoon, I had a chance to introduce myself to Dr. Omole and compliment her on her talk (think: nerdy fan girl moment). She chuckled a little then asked me to put down my bag and stretch out my arms. Next, she placed her hands on the inside of my elbows and used her thumbs to press firmly on pressure points that I didn’t even know I had. “This is where you need to push to relieve stress,” she said.  Then she showed me how to find these points on my own and wished me well before leaving for the day.

My interaction with Dr. Omole—literally rubbing elbows with her—has stuck with me well beyond the meeting. There’s a lot of bad news in the world and some days I don’t feel too optimistic. And then, a moment of kindness, connection, and compassion happens, and I’m reenergized.

Meeting Dr. Omole and the other great folks at MSM fills me with a sense of hope and urgency around the issues plaguing our collective health and wellbeing. We must take care of our healers so they can, in turn, take care of us. We must address inequities in health education, access, and representation if we are committed to a better future.

Figuratively speaking, we’ve got to push on these pressure points to relieve stress.