Doctor Hoo:
Moira Smith, MD

Emergency medicine requires physicians to be calm and focused, ready for anything. For Moira Smith, MD ’19, Res ’22, Fel ’24, the specialty is a perfect fit.

“When there is a true emergency, that’s when I feel my calmest and my most mentally clear. There are so many things going on at once, so many different patients at so many different stages and levels of acuity. To be able to keep up with all of that, you really do have to be focused,” she says.

Smith was exposed early to the field of emergency medicine, thanks to her father and uncle. Both men are emergency medicine physicians in community hospitals.

“My dad works in a hospital in Danville, Va., so I grew up seeing what he did, always thinking that I was going to do emergency medicine. I still shadowed many different specialties in high school and college, to get a better understanding of other specialties and kept an open mind during medical school,” she says. “I enjoyed every rotation in medical school and every experience confirmed that I wanted to do emergency medicine. In emergency medicine, we get to take care of every patient that comes through the door – no matter what condition they’re presenting with. By choosing emergency medicine, I get to do all the things I loved from the other specialties. You also interact so much with the rest of the health system, collaborating on management for many of these patients.”

After high school, Smith attended the University of Virginia and double majored in biology and religious studies. She would go on to earn her MPH at UVA as well, before starting medical school in 2015.

Smith credits her mother for initially encouraging her to consider UVA because she had worked with several UVA grads and found them to be hard working and helpful to fellow alumni. Like emergency medicine, UVA turned out to be a perfect fit for Smith.

“The people I’ve met here have been extraordinary – in terms of being some of the most intelligent and hardworking people but also being some of the kindest people at the same time. It’s just a wonderful blend,” she says. “Plus, UVA offers a high-quality education in so many different fields and provides a lot of different experiences. I began undergrad here as a primarily humanities person doing premed, and now I’ve done my medical training, had a variety of research experiences, gotten my Master’s in Public Health here, and now I’m doing informatics, which is such a new field.”

Smith is currently in the second year of a two-year clinical informatics fellowship. After completing her emergency medicine residency in 2022, she initially considered a fellowship in medical education but the research side of informatics appealed to her.

“It’s an interdisciplinary field that uses data, technology, and information to ultimately improve patient care and patient health outcomes,” she says. “There’s some overlap with data science, but it’s not the same as data science or health IT. There are a lot of operational components to informatics. There’s a lot that you can do with research, and you can apply it to medical education as well.”

Smith finished her fellowship in June and stayed at UVA as an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine.

Forging a career in academic medicine is something that Smith looks forward to because it gives her the opportunity to work in a variety of areas and collaborate with others at UVA Health.

“I have always loved learning and the process of continuing to learn. I like research, and I like teaching. It’s ultimately about taking care of the patient, and with medical education, you are also training the people who are going to replace you after you’re gone,” she says. “Medicine is one of the few remaining professions that has a true apprenticeship in the residency program and also in medical school as well, where you’re working side-by-side with an expert on your particular craft. I find all of that to be so fun. It’s sort of its own mission of making sure that the practice of medicine is handed down to the next generation.”

Reflecting on her own medical training, Smith recalls being a first-year resident at UVA when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. She has an indelible memory of rotating in the surgical ICU in March 2020 when an email came out requiring hospital staff to wear masks all the time.
In the months that followed, Smith and her colleagues were impacted by the pandemic in a variety of ways. “One of the biggest impacts was the change in social support. In our emergency medicine residency program, we meet once a week for five hours every Wednesday morning for didactic conferences and have monthly journal clubs, and for a substantial period of time none of that could take place in person.”

These days, patient volumes in the ED are higher than before the pandemic. It means Smith spends many long days and nights in the ED caring for patients, in addition to her fellowship and teaching responsibilities. She is also an active member of the American College of Emergency Physicians and the Emergency Medicine Residents Association.

Smith is grateful to have the support of her family, as well as friends from medical school. This fall, they will celebrate their five-year class reunion at Fall Alumni Weekend, sponsored by the UVA Medical Alumni Association.

“I’m even closer with my friends from medical school now than when we were in school because now we have more of the richness of history together. Everyone has lived through significant years in their personal and professional lives since we graduated,” she says. “I think the friends that you meet in medical school are in some ways a different type of friend because of how rigorous the training is and how challenging and rewarding medicine is. I think medicine can create friendships that are at a very deep level. I feel so fortunate that I had such a wonderful group of friends in my medical school class.”

As she looks ahead, Smith is excited about the career she sees unfolding – working as an attending in the Emergency Department, teaching medical students and residents, plus doing research and clinical informatics for the department and UVA Health at large.

Smith says it will be a “fun mix,” but also one that will be personally satisfying. “Sometimes people talk about the adrenaline rush of the ED, but I would call it more of a meaning rush. It’s such meaningful, fulfilling work.”