Esther H. Chen

Dr. Esther H. Chen is a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. She provides clinical care at both UCSF Medical Center and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Additionally, she serves as the associate program director for UCSF's residency program in emergency medicine, playing a key leadership role in graduate medical education.

Dr. Chen earned her undergraduate degree in biological sciences from Stanford University, followed by her medical degree from the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. She completed her emergency medicine residency at the University of Pennsylvania and has since established herself as a prominent educator and researcher in the field. In 2017, she completed UCSF's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Champion Training, reflecting her commitment to advancing equity in medicine.

Dr. Chen's research spans multiple critical areas in emergency medicine and medical education. Her work on gender disparity in analgesic treatment for abdominal pain has been widely cited (over 92 citations), establishing her expertise in identifying and addressing bias in clinical practice. She has made significant contributions to medical education methodology, developing innovative approaches to residency training including flipped classroom models and game-based learning for high-risk obstetric emergencies. Her research also focuses on diagnostic imaging utilization, shared decision-making in time-constrained settings, and quality improvement initiatives with a particular emphasis on sustainability and financial incentives for resident engagement.

More recently, Dr. Chen has emerged as a leader in addressing systemic issues in academic medicine, with publications examining racism in emergency medicine research and practice, reporting of race and ethnicity in medical literature, and strategies for handling microaggressions in the workplace. Her work on the Standardized Letter of Evaluation has shed light on how quiet students are perceived in residency applications, contributing to more equitable evaluation practices.

As associate program director, Dr. Chen mentors numerous residents and fellows while implementing educational innovations that have influenced emergency medicine training nationwide. Her scholarly work demonstrates a consistent commitment to improving both clinical practice and educational methodologies in emergency medicine through rigorous research and thoughtful application of findings to real-world settings.