Hello from Orlando! We hope that everyone is staying healthy and safe. As we begin our summer, we all take a collective sigh of frustration for what has been an incredibly difficult year thus far. We are facing the worst global pandemic of our lifetimes and continue to be diligent and cautious as COVID-19 still remains prevalent in our community. Additionally, we witnessed yet another heinous act of police brutality against our Black community followed by immediate nationwide outrage and protests calling for change to our broken system.

Orlando Health has always strived to be a loving and unified family. In the essence of these ideals, the EM residency organized a “Healthcare Workers for Black Lives” protest in the lobby of the hospital where we knelt in honor of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. We heard many wonderful speeches from our amazing colleagues about inequality in our country and how we can continue the fight for equality moving forward. We are so proud of our residents, Drs. Beaulah Castor, Innocent Akujuobi and Agi Gaetig, for organizing this and bringing us together with love and support. The conversation will continue moving forward at Orlando Health with focus groups and meeting spaces for how we can help fight inequality in our community. Please remember that we have a responsibility as leaders in our community to seek reform for the systemic racism that exists in every facet of our nation, including healthcare. And we have a responsibility to our patients to look internally and identify our own internal biases and overcome them.

If you have not done so already, please find out who your local and national representatives are and message them about making change, and most importantly, VOTE. Primary elections are on August 18 and the Florida general election is November 3.

We want to close by saying thank you to all of our graduating third-year residents. Thank you so much for all of your teaching and wisdom. You guys are all awesome and we are going to miss you so much! And finally, we are so excited to welcome our entire new intern class! July 1 couldn’t come soon enough. Don’t forget to keep living like Sal! ■