Biography

Monera Wong MD, grew up in London, England. She received her medical degree from Royal Free Hospital, School of Medicine in 1994. She completed her training in Geriatric Medicine before moving to Boston to join her husband in 2001. Monera initially volunteered at MGH Senior Health before taking up her fellowship position here in 2002.

Monera decided to pursue a career in medicine because it seemed like a noble profession, and no one in her family was a doctor.

At MGH Senior Health, Monera enjoys the opportunity to practice evidence-based medicine. She finds helping patients negotiate the complex healthcare system to be the most rewarding part of her job.

Her research interest is in dementia. She has conducted research and is committed to providing caregiver support for patients with dementia. Her current research is on screening for dementia in primary care. Monera has also written extensively on Geriatric Medicine for the web.

Outside of the practice, Monera is a member of several professional societies, including the American Geriatrics society and the American Medical Directors Association.

In her spare time, she enjoys practicing yoga and hiking with her husband, son and daughter.

ResearchDr. Wong developed and implemented a research-training project to teach ambulatory care residents in Internal Medicine how to communicate with older adults living with chronic disease. The goal was to teach residents the importance of obtaining a Health Care Proxy.

The primary aim was to increase the percentage of patients over 65 that have a completed healthcare proxy form in their medical chart within two visits to their primary care practice. The secondary aim was to increase the percentage of patients over 65 that have a documented healthcare proxy in their electronic medical record within two visits to their primary care practice.

The long-term goal remains to enable young clinicians to be competent and comfortable with obtaining and documenting a health care proxy status. This work has led to a quarterly teaching block on Advance Directives, which Dr. Wong leads. All ambulatory care residents at Massachusetts General Hospital attend this as a mandatory teaching session.

Dr. Wong was Co-Principal Investigator on the study: Screening for Executive Dysfunction in Primary Care. The research agenda had five phases. Phase 2 (Correlation of modified Clock Draw Test with chronic disease indices) was completed. The findings were presented in a Research Forum in Clinical Effectiveness as part of Dr. Wongs MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Publications

Challenges in Recruiting Caregivers of Dementia Patients
Presented at: 17th Annual ADRC Scientific Symposium, Jan 2004

Challenges in Recruiting Research Subjects in Dementia Studies
The Impact of Undercoding Dementia in the Electronic Medical Record
Presented at: American Geriatric Society 2005 Annual Meeting, May 2005

Healthy aging: Americans living longer. Article in Be Healthy. December 2007. Volume 2, No. 4. http://www2.baystatebanner.com/behealthy/issues/2007/1206/index.html