Asma Ahmed
Asma Ahmed, MD
Assistant Director and Attending Physician
NYC Health + Hospitals/Carter
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Learning From Patients
Years later, Dr. Asma Ahmed still remembers her well: An angry young patient who constantly cursed at the staff. “Initially, I was just, ‘Oh, she’s just bad, she’s difficult and negative,’ ” Dr. Ahmed said.
But then she had an impulse to find out why. “I got to know her and made a connection. We had many conversations and I found out she was abused from six years old. She was never respected in her life so she didn’t know how to respect other people.”
In medicine, Dr. Ahmed says, “every day we learn, and I have learned from every patient. I hear their story, I spend time with them, just talking and asking questions about their lives. If I understand them more I can do a better job treating them.”
Dr. Ahmed grew up in Bangladesh, got married as a teenager and had two children by the time she began medical school. Her plan to come to the United States turned out to be a nine-year process that included a trip to Singapore to take her foreign medical graduate exam. She arrived in New York in 1994 and joined NYC Health + Hospitals/Goldwater three years later. She’s been an integral part of the Goldwater-Coler-Carter team ever since and assistant director at Carter since 2013.
After nearly 30 years in NYC Health + Hospitals post-acute and long-term centers, Dr. Ahmed is widely admired as an exceptional clinician who connects with patients and families with compassion and respect.
All three of Dr. Ahmed’s grown children are medical professionals and the advice she’s always given them is to be kind, have patience and keep learning. “I tell them, ‘Think about if one of us is lying in the bed and what would you do. That’s what you should do for every patient.’ “