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Suzanne Bird, MD, DLFAPA Dr. Suzanne Bird is currently Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a Staff Psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is a graduate of Amherst College and Dartmouth Medical School and completed her psychiatry residency training at Tufts Medical School. Following Psychiatry residency training where Dr. Bird met her husband Dr. Bob Joseph, they moved together to Cambridge Hospital where she worked in a variety of outpatient settings until becoming Director of the Psychiatric Emergency Service there in 1997 – a position that she held for 16 years until moving in 2013 to MGH to take on the role of Director of the Acute Psychiatry Service in the Massachusetts General Hospital Emergency Department. At MGH, Dr. Bird continued to expand her clinical leadership skills as an emergency psychiatrist, building close collaborations with both internal and external stake holders, creating a dedicated team of psychiatric nurse practitioners to provide more longitudinal care for long-stay ED psychiatric patients, and working with hospital and emergency medicine leadership to create a dedicated 20-bed acute psychiatry service where emergency psychiatric patients could receive more private and therapeutic care. Throughout years of relentless systemic challenges, the extreme demands of the COVID pandemic on healthcare delivery, and the weight of bearing witness to the suffering of acutely ill patients, she has been sustained by her close working relationships with colleagues in all roles and disciplines, and by her active involvement in research, teaching, training and mentorship. Over the past 30 years Dr. Bird has taught pre-clinical medical students, rotating students from Harvard and elsewhere, acted as a core faculty member for the psychiatric residency programs first at Cambridge and then at MGH, while also providing active mentorship to more junior faculty. After almost 12 years as APS Director, in 2024 she stepped back from this role. She is currently seeing outpatients in the private practice she has maintained since finishing residency, acting as an expert legal consultant, and continuing to provide bedside teaching and mentorship to Harvard Medical students during their core rotation in psychiatry. As an English major and lifelong reader, Dr. Bird has always been drawn to individual narratives and curious about how people experience and make sense of their lives. As a psychiatrist and as a teacher, she has maintained these interests working with individuals in acute distress in the emergency department while also getting to know her outpatients on a longitudinal basis. She consi ders these human stories the foundation of her career and feels privileged that psychiatry has offered her the opportunity for such meaningful connection with others. The MPS is pleased to present Dr. Suzanne Bird with the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society 2025 Outstanding Psychiatrist Award for Clinical Psychiatry. Clinical Psychiatry - Previous Awardees:
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