Ellen Taylor Seldin: a conversation with the editor

Ellen Taylor, MD, and William C. Roberts, MD

From the Department of Emergency Medicine, Doctors Hospital, Dallas, Texas (Taylor Seldin); and the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, Texas (Roberts).

Corresponding author: Ellen Taylor, MD, Department of Emergency Medicine, Doctors Hospital, 9440 Poppy Drive, Dallas, Texas 75218.

Ellen Taylor (name changed from Moncy) Seldin was born in Peking, China, on July 28, 1939. Her father was a naval officer and therefore they lived in several different countries. After graduation from public high school, she went to nursing school at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She obtained a nursing degree and then enrolled in Boston University, where she received a bachelor of science degree in 1963. Her junior year was spent in Paris supported by a scholarship from Hamilton College, and she became fluent in French. After deciding that she wanted to be a physician, she enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin to complete her premedical school requirements and then went to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas, graduating in 1970. Her internship and residency in general surgery were at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. She entered clinical practice in Denver and was an active member of the surgical faculty of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, becoming an associate professor in 1987. In 1988, she was awarded the Golden Apple Teaching Award and in 1989, the Outstanding Clinical Preceptor Award from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

In 1989, she moved to Seattle, Washington, and continued her surgical practice there. Because of an illness in the early 1990s, she gave up her practice of surgery and became an emergency room physician, moving to Greenville, Kentucky. After 3 years of practice there, she returned to Dallas, Texas, as the wife of Dr. Donald Seldin. Dr. Ellen Taylor is a charming and talented lady who continues to be an active physician in the specialty of emergency medicine.