When Melissa Sen Phuong is asked what served as her inspiration to excel in the MD/PhD program at the uOttawa Faculty of Medicine, she doesn’t have to think very hard.
She’s the daughter of Vietnam War refugees. Her parents and their families were among the thousands of South Vietnamese who fled their homeland by boat in the war’s chaotic aftermath. As youngsters, her mother and father survived perilous sea journeys on rickety fishing vessels, initially arriving at refugee camps in neighboring nations. They both settled in Canada in the early 1980s and eventually met and married.
Her family’s experiences during this migration and humanitarian crisis shaped her outlook on medicine and her background is helping her become an empathetic, culturally competent physician-scientist.
“One of the most important influences in my life to even consider medicine as a career option was my family's experience as Vietnamese ‘boat people,’ including the risk factors they experienced and barriers to healthcare access,” says Phuong, who graduates this spring convocation from the highly selective MD/PhD program.
“I have to give my parents an immense amount of credit for modelling and instilling in me resiliency, a strong work ethic, and empathy, all of which are essential in the training I have undertaken. They have also been a great support and have always been on top of my PhD studies and every clinical rotation I have done, which is not easy when they don't have a background in medicine or academia.”
Born and raised in Mississauga, Phuong is fast on her way to becoming an impactful clinician-scientist after completing her PhD under the Faculty’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology (BMI) and Dr. Subash Sad. She studied inflammatory mechanisms in infections of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a highly drug-resistant bacteria that’s a growing concern among health care providers.
“Melissa worked diligently and with tremendous drive and enthusiasm to compete her PhD,” Dr. Sad says.
The demanding MD-PhD program consists of seven years – two pre-clerkship years at the MD level, three years at the PhD level and the final two clerkship years at the MD level. Only four students are admitted per incoming MD class.
Phuong racked up awards throughout her training. Her graduate studies were supported by the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship;; she was awarded $150,000 provided over three years of her PhD training. She received the uOttawa BMI Syed Sattar Student Award as well as the Canadian Society of Microbiologists' Burrows Award for Womxn in Microbiology.
As they were for all her peers, the COVID-19 lockdowns were tough, particularly the limitations it put on access to labs. But she found new ways to become resourceful with her time and maximize productivity. Amid the pandemic restrictions, she was the primary author for a paper in Cell Death & Disease that revealed new information about Pseudomonas aeruginosa’s impacts in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients.
The pandemic also gave her a searing personal look at the painful costs of our overwhelmed healthcare systems as it limited her grandmother's access to care during the last couple years of her life. It also prevented Phuong from giving her beloved grandmother, Anh Quach, a final face-to-face goodbye before she died at age 92.
Phuong was thinking about pursuing Internal Medicine following graduation due to the scope of clinical work and all the varied research opportunities, but this difficult experience with her grandmother’s care made the choice plain.
“What truly validated this decision for me was seeing how our family struggled to cope with my grandmother's declining health, especially as it became clear to me how these experiences were influencing my own work during Internal Medicine rotations and my investment in patient advocacy,” she says.
Following convocation, she will pursue her Internal Medicine training and continue to work at The Ottawa Hospital.
The concept of “paying it forward” is important to her. She aims to provide mentorship to future cohorts of trainees, particularly those with limited academic connections, as was the case for her when she first started thinking about a career as a clinician-scientist.
“I've always said that due to various circumstances, whether cultural, political instability, or trying to survive in a new environment, the women in the generations before me never had the same opportunities to pursue a higher education, never mind to the extent that I was privileged to complete,” she says.
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The MD-PhD fund provides financial support to students during the MD portion of the MD-PhD program at the Faculty of Medicine."