Dr. Shamoon: Never sitting on the bench

Zafar Shamoon, D.O., lived in New York for eight years. He and his wife, Nadia Yusaf, M.D., lived there while she was training in Radiology at Strong Memorial Hospital – University of Rochester. He served as the medical director of the ER at Rochester General Hospital, one of the busiest ERs in the country. Drs. Shamoon and Yusaf decided to move back home to Michigan to be closer to family.

Dr. Shamoon is a board-certified emergency medicine physician and serves as chair of Emergency Medicine at Beaumont, Dearborn. He was born and raised in Detroit where he became an avid Detroit Tigers fan. He still remembers being a child, watching Kirk Gibson hit two home runs in the same game to win the 1984 World Series. In fact, if he were not a physician, Dr. Shamoon believes he would have been a sports broadcaster or a head coach of a basketball team.

Prior to attending medical school at the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, Dr. Shamoon was an ER technician at St. Mary Mercy Livonia, which is where he “fell in love with emergency medicine.”

Dr. Shamoon is a teacher. He enjoys spending time with residents, imparting his wisdom on them. The most important thing he stresses is to enjoy the art of medicine.

“The art is sometimes overlooked, especially emergency medicine,” he said. “There are so many administrative duties now, and we should get back to enjoying the art.”

One of Dr. Shamoon’s goals with every resident is to make him/her better physicians than he is by teaching lessons he learned at a later stage in his career.

“I joke with them, telling them they’ll never be as good as me, but I know that’s not true,” he said.

Physician burnout is another topic Dr. Shamoon is passionate about. He loves to lecture on the topic and has spoken at conferences in Chicago as well as Grand Rapids.

“We need to take care of ourselves. I tell the residents to focus on their hobbies and spend time with their families,” he said.

Dr. Shamoon does practice what he preaches. He loves to travel with his wife and children, Selena and Ibrahim. They go back to New York at least once per year and spend time during the winter in Laguna Beach, CA. Dr. Shamoon enjoys playing basketball and working out.

In his career, Dr. Shamoon strives to make a difference for the critically ill. When he goes into the ER department, he knows anything can come through the door. The entire shift will be a mystery, and not knowing what’s going to come through the door is what he loves about emergency medicine.

"That is the beauty of emergency medicine," Dr. Shamoon. "It's the only medical discipline that doesn't discriminate against disease process, age or gender. We see everything."