Annual Pub 2023 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 25
SUMMER 2023 MAGAZINE
When he’s not occupied with his duties as a second-year resident
at the Valley Health System, Dr. Ma volunteers with Critical Care
Comics, a Las Vegas nonpro昀t with the mission of bringing joy to
pediatric hospital patients by wearing superhero costumes and
donating comics and toys.
As Dr. Ma remembers it, he got connected with Critical Care
Comics “the same way that I get into a lot of things; it was kind of
an accident.” In 2019 – when he was a third-year medical student
at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine – Dr. Ma encountered a
cast of colorfully dressed characters while he was working in a local
hospital. A lifelong comic and video game fan, he was intrigued
and reached out to the nonpro昀t, asking how he could get involved.
“In residency, you have even less free time than the limited time
that we have in medical school, so it’s easy to get complacent and
not want to do anything in residency, let alone community-based
activities. I 昀nd that volunteering keeps me engaged; it really makes
me go out and interact with people. It’s something that I try to do
at least once a month, sometimes multiple times per month,” Dr.
Ma says. “It really lets me have an opportunity to express myself
in a way that I really don’t get to on a daily basis.”
Embodying the character of Spider-Man – more speci昀cally, Miles
Morales, an iteration of the superhero from the 2018 昀lm,
