Dr. Kathleen Isaac: Mental Health and Medical Residents, Part 1

RUSK Insights on Rehabilitation Medicine

Dr. Kathleen Isaac is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU Langone Health. As a Haitian-American, cis-gender female, she directs the Medical Student and House Staff Mental Health program, which provides individual, couples, and group psychotherapy to medical students, residents, and fellows. She also has a part-time private practice focused on serving BIPOC and LGBTQ+ clients with integrative treatment approaches, where she specializes in trauma, health psychology, and cultural issues. Dr. Isaac also is an adjunct lecturer in the City College of New York’s doctoral program in clinical psychology where she teaches an advanced practicum on intersectional therapy and a Group Psychotherapy course. She has been featured on multiple media platforms, including NBC and the New York Times. Recently, she has published in the journal Psychiatry Annals and in a book chapter dealing with Her Clients’ Racial Identity Development During the Pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement.

The following items were discussed in Part 1: regarding how she developed an interest in working with medical residents; how diversity is defined at NYU; why it is essential for the health workforce to be diverse from the perspective of both the clinicians and the patients whom they treat; kinds of structural barriers of an institutional nature within the learning environment that have the capability to hinder workforce diversity; and preparing residents at the beginning of their residency to deal with the kinds of hardship that are likely to develop during the early months of training.