Dr. Neurologist Ayaz Khawaja Creates COVID-19 Neurology Referral Center
June 17, 2022
Thanks to his positive experience as a fellow at the Wayne State University Office of the Provost’s 2021-2022 Academic Leadership Academy, the School of Medicine’s Assistant Professor of Neurology Ayaz Khawaja, MD, provides a critical need for patients who have recovered from COVID-19 but developed a neurological complication in the process.
The provost’s office chose Dr. Khawaja as a Fellow at the Academic Leadership Academy for 2021-2022. He took the opportunity to set up a COVID-19 neurological referral center that provides expert evidence-based evaluation and treatments to patients with COVID-19 neurological effects, and to lead long-term collaborations with other disciplines, hospitals and society to provide a multifaceted, comprehensive treatment approach. to these patients.
Dr. Khawaja is a neurohospitalist and consultant at Harper University Hospital and Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and a neurohospitalist, consultant and neurointensivist at Detroit Receiving Hospital.
ALA is an intensive years of leadership development experience. Each of the fellows led a team to implement a project for the benefit of the larger Wayne State University community.
“The main objectives prior to the start of the ALA Scholarship were to expand our network to reach more patients, better communicate with our current patients and understand the impact of these complications on their lives, and better coordinate their care with other services and with limited resources available due to the general impact of COVID-19, “said Dr. Khawaja.” We have been successfully able to continue to expand the reach of our clinic and continue to provide value to our patients, leads to excellent retention rates and follow-ups. We also had better adherence of our patients to longitudinal follow-ups given the value that the clinic provided in meeting a critically unmet need in patients who have recovered from COVID-19 but developed neurological complications. “
ALA provided support in the form of learning modules on leadership, diversity and equality; conflict resolution; opportunity to meet and talk with leading experts who provided insights into the modules and shared their own experiences; and one-on-one mentoring sessions.
“All of these sessions created a better insight into my professional persona, critically evaluated strengths and weaknesses and be more aware of potential areas for improvement and implicit biases,” he said. “I benefited greatly from learning from the experiences of the mentors and the WSU faculty, who were responsible for managing the academy. I feel better prepared to lead a team into any project and anticipate challenges that may arise.”
Dr. Khawaja joined the Department of Neurology in 2019. He completed his residency in neurology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital and then continued with a scholarship to the combined neurocritical care program at Massachusetts General Hospital / Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 2018. He served as postdoc researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital from 2018 to 2019 before joining the staff at WSU. He is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (2016) and is board certified by the United Council of Neurosciences for Neurocritical Care.
