18 minute read
School of Medicine surpasses 1,000 alumni
Geisinger College’s vision statement says we’ll help make better health easier in our region and beyond: through education, research and scholarship that develop healthcare professionals inspired and prepared to improve the health of diverse people and populations and to use Geisinger’s unique assets to transform the way care is delivered.
Our story spans the spectrum of healthcare. We have nursing alums working throughout the system, and MBS alums doing various things for Geisinger including advancing their education in our medical school. Soon we’ll add genetic counselors to our cohort. Lots of our alums have been in leadership for years since their training. Turning our learners into our colleagues is one of the purposes of teaching.
In short, our alumni are the best metric we have to measure our success. And with the Class of 2024, our School of Medicine surpassed 1,000 MD alumni. Here, we celebrate them through stories that illustrate the incredible journey our college has been on to fulfill our strategic vision.
Matthew Mullen, MD, Charter Class of 2013
‘I always knew I would come back to northeast Pennsylvania’
Matthew Mullen, MD ’13, a double board-certified adult cardiac surgeon, returned to his roots when he chose to practice at Geisinger.
“The whole purpose of the med school was to improve the healthcare offered in this region, and I felt that I would be able to contribute in a meaningful way,” he said.
Today, he said he couldn’t be happier with his decision. “The team I have here, across the board, is outstanding. From the preoperative care and from the care that the cardiologist provides to the cardiac surgery team in the operating room to the ICU, the support is outstanding. It’s better than I imagined,” he said.
He also contributes to the community he loves by mentoring medical students and lecturing at the School of Medicine.
“Being a teacher is a very important component to any medical practice,” he said. “Obviously patient care is the number one priority but advancing the field and training people under you — that’s what academic medicine means.”
Jason Dinko, MD ’14
The power of listening
As a medical student, Jason Dinko, MD ’14, was impressed by how frequently school leadership sought student feedback and how carefully they listened when students spoke.
“It really struck me, and it’s something I try to do today — I make sure I’m listening to those I’m attempting to serve,” he said.
These days, for Dr. Dinko, “who he serves” refers to both patients and fellow primary care doctors.
Last year he was named a physician representative on Geisinger’s Board of Directors, where he serves as a voice for the frontline physicians. “When Geisinger leaders have something in mind, they turn to the physician representatives. They want to know how this might help in our day-to-day and ask for our help in moving the vision forward,” he said.
Dr. Dinko is pleased to see how well received his insights are and has a new appreciation for just how much work it takes to affect change in a large system. But, he says, the kinds of changes Geisinger brings to primary care are well worth the effort.
“One of the best things they’ve done is the medication therapy management pharmacy program,” he said. “When I have a patient who requires more frequent ‘touches,’ a clinical pharmacist can see the patient to make any adjustments. This program is really helpful for diabetes, chronic pain and psychiatry.”
While Dr. Dinko didn’t expect to be on the board and serving as a program director so soon, he did expect to be delivering primary care near his own hometown of White Haven when he chose to attend medical school at Geisinger. “My goal was always to stay fairly close to home,” he said. “It’s very rewarding to now serve the community in which I grew up.”
Jill Berlin, MD ’15
The freedom to discover
When Jill Berlin, MD ’15, was a student at the School of Medicine, she spent a lot of time with mentors, connecting with attendings and CRNAs. The long chats drove her to specialize in anesthesiology.
Anesthesia is “not even a required rotation at many medical schools, so I was lucky,” she said. “The early exposure to a wide range of specialties and access to professionals in the field enabled me to choose my career with confidence.”
Dr. Berlin’s mentors also taught her the unusual skill set an anesthesiologist needs.
“You’re seeing patients at a critical time, so you must connect quickly and authentically,” she said. “During surgery, anesthesiology forces you to delve into physiology and pharmacology and apply them in tandem in a high-pressure situation.”
Dr. Berlin attended residency at Yale, where she stayed for a fellowship in regional anesthesiology (nerve blocks). And she’s on the faculty at Yale, working with residents, fellows and CRNA students.
She added that she formed lifelong friendships at Geisinger. She recently attended a classmate’s wedding.
Rachel Brutico Giannotti, MD ’16, MBS ’11, and Vince Giannotti, MD ’16, MBS ’12
Lessons in resilience and compassion
Vince and Rachel Giannotti met on the first day of medical school. They married during their third year and graduated together in 2016. They had their first child when they were third-year residents — she in pediatrics and he in emergency medicine at Penn State Hershey.
Then COVID hit.
“The pandemic really blindsided us,” Vince said. “There was the stress of not knowing what we were dealing with. I was not even 6 months out from residency, and I was intubating patients outside in tents.”
As a pediatrician, Rachel had the opposite problem. Every pediatrician at her practice was let go. During this upheaval, the couple awaited the birth of their second child. They said lessons learned in medical school helped them to remain resilient and determined.
“We had a lot of strong preceptors who emphasized the human aspect of practicing medicine,” Vince said. “Switching between triaging the sicker patients and interacting with those not so sick is hard. Geisinger prepared me to have compassion for our patients and taught me to understand their perspective.”
Rachel feels COVID has given her more empathy for patients, especially those with vaccine hesitancy. “I really feel their emotions. And I give my students the same advice I received. Sit with the patient and touch their arm or hold their hand. Human connection is a big part of healing.”
As the pandemic receded, Rachel joined Vince at Geisinger and life normalized. “It was definitely a stressful time, but we got through it all," Vince said. "And now we're living the dream."
Eric Drago, MD ’17
An innovator and a lifelong learner
Eric Drago, MD ’17, isn’t afraid of change or trying new things. He had a career in research before medical school. That career offered to pay for his master’s degree, where his teachers told him he’d be perfect for medical school.
Now one medical degree and internal medicine residency later, he’s still not settled. He is helping Geisinger to revolutionize medical care by serving as director of both Geisinger at Home (in the Northeast) and Hospital at Home, a novel program that “admits” patients to the hospital while they are comfortable in their own homes. Oh, and he’s also now pursuing an MBA.
One thing he believes won’t change is his commitment to his hometown and the lessons in community engagement he learned at the School of Medicine.
“When I went to medical school, I truly was one of those who said, ‘I will practice in this area’ and it’s something I really pride myself on,” he said. “When I was a kid, if you had a problem you went to Philadelphia. But now, people go to Geisinger Wyoming Valley. People aren’t running to these ‘pinnacles’ of healthcare because we are one right here.”
As director of Geisinger at Home Northeast and Hospital at Home, he is helping to build infrastructure to support an entirely new approach to patient care. The programs drive down costs and make patients who dislike hospital lights, noise and food much more comfortable. The possibilities have so intrigued Dr. Drago that he’s going back to school again for an MBA.
“If you had said I’d be doing this when I was an undergrad, I wouldn’t have believed it. It’s been a journey and I’m glad it’s occurred, but I would have never predicted any of this.”
Elizabeth Helwig Seasock, MD '17
‘Wellness matters’
After residency at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, Elizabeth Helwig Seasock, MD ’17, and her husband came home to Pennsylvania, where they both grew up.
“I knew I wanted to be part of the Geisinger academic health system and have access to everything that comes along with being involved in academics, including opportunities to teach.”
Today, Dr. Seasock lives in Selinsgrove and works as a child psychiatrist, moving between Danville and the WilkesBarre/Scranton area, where she serves as psychiatry clerkship director for Geisinger College of Health Sciences.
“I meet with the students in the clerkship weekly,” she said. “There’s also extra time given to some of our students who run into a difficult ethical situation or experience countertransference, where a patient might pull at their heartstrings. I want students to walk away from their psychiatry experience with compassion for all of their patients and a better understanding of how biology and social stressors and psychological stressors impact a patient’s broader health.”
Above all, Dr. Seasock said she wants her students to take care of themselves. “Psychiatry — especially child psychiatry — can get really heavy. Wellness is one of those buzzwords but really that’s because it matters. When I leave at the end of the day, I am no longer a psychiatrist. I am mommy and I am a wife and a daughter and a sister and a friend. I want our students to feel empowered to do the same and to advocate for themselves during their psychiatry clerkship and on all of their other clerkships and in their future role as physician.”
Mark Dunleavy, MD ’18 and Amelia Mackarey, MD ’20
Coming home to practice
Mark Dunleavy, MD ’18, who’s now an attending orthopaedic surgeon in Princeton, NJ, found two things at Geisinger that support and motivate him today. The first is his wife, pediatrician Amelia Mackarey, MD ’20. The second is a focus on patients and community.
“Amelia and I are both from Scranton,” Dr. Dunleavy said. “We met in preschool, lost touch, but then met again at Geisinger.”
The couple stayed connected through his 5-year orthopaedic surgery residency at Penn State and 1-year adult reconstruction fellowship at Rush University in Chicago. They were married in 2024.
“Geisinger is committed to patient-centered care, as well as a focus on a physician’s role in the community,” Dr. Dunleavy said. “Both of these are important to me, especially the community aspect.”
Dr. Dunleavy is also grateful to Geisinger faculty for mentoring and coaching that helped him match into one of medicine’s most competitive specialties.
“The curriculum was very comprehensive and competitive,” he said. “I was set up with all the tools I needed to succeed. Then having the association with Geisinger was such a big help. It tied us to a department where I could go for help. I was able to get letters and some of the surgeons were very committed to having me spend extra time in the OR. I'm grateful. I know that I'm just a product of the people around me."
Nichole Ogojiaku, MD ’19
An avenue for advocacy
When she graduated from Duke University in 2013 with a public policy degree, Nichole Ogojiaku, MD ’19, was torn between pursuing medicine or a career in public health policy.
She took a gap year, interning at a Georgia county public health department and working as an emergency medicine scribe. Those experiences cemented a desire to be a primary care physician and advocate, making Geisinger a perfect fit for medical school.
“The community emphasis for which the med school was created, and its mission, really resonated with me,” she said. “And I learned that Geisinger stayed true to its mission. From the beginning, we were involved with patients, and we had the unique experience of being paired with a family.”
Dr. Ogojiaku received a National Health Service Corps scholarship. The federal government paid her tuition. In exchange, she committed to work 3 years in a low-income or underserved area after finishing residency.
“When I was in residency, I became the junior fellow chair for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists District 11, which is covers the whole state of Texas,” she explained. “That was a lot of advocacy. We helped to extend postpartum coverage through Medicaid for 12 months instead of the traditional 6 weeks. We were going to the capitol; we were doing social media campaigns. We actually changed legislation.”
The experience reinforced Dr. Ogojiaku’s desire to be an advocate. “Given the nature of where I work, there are extra barriers to care,” she said. “I’m able to be a guide and a resource. I think I will stay at this clinic or one like it. Even if I didn’t have the NHSC scholarship, I’d probably be working where I am. With my public health background, that’s my career goal: To go where the need is.”
Jessica Briscoe, MD ’20, MBS ’13
Expanding research opportunities
When Jessica Briscoe, MBS ’13, MD ’20, achieves her goal of being a cardiothoracic surgeon with a translation research lab of her own, her journey will feature stops at Harvard, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins. But she’s most grateful for the time she spent at Geisinger, both as an MBS and an MD student.
As a medical student, Dr. Briscoe was intensely interested in research and found eager support in School of Medicine faculty Sonia Lobo, PhD, associate dean for research and scholarship, and Ying-Ju Sung, PhD, professor of anatomy.
Her summer research work with Dr. Sung helped her to win a place at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Medical Research Fellows Program at Harvard.
Inspired, she broached the idea of creating an honors thesis program at Geisinger. The result is the School of Medicine’s Medical Research Honors Program. The first 11 students to complete the program graduated in 2024. Dr. Briscoe spoke virtually at a pre-commencement dinner for these scholars.
“If I had an idea or a question at Geisinger, the answer was always, ‘How can we make it happen?’” she said.
Dr. Briscoe has been awarded an NIH F32 post-doctoral fellowship award and the American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship award. She’s between her first and second year of a research year at Johns Hopkins. She’s completing a general surgery residency at Georgetown.
Kathy Snyder, MD ’21, MBS ’17
Carrying Geisinger innovations in peer support and wellness to Seattle
Kathy Snyder, MD ’21, MBS ’17, is now chief resident in the psychiatry residency program at the University of Washington. She’ll graduate with a distinction recognition in the teacher scholar pathway. The distinction comes from programs she initiated in her residency and research she carried out as a result. These programs, she said, were begun at Geisinger.
“It’s easy to tie everything back to Geisinger,” she said. “The University of Washington is a high volume, diverse training program — we are one of the largest psychiatry programs in the country — and it’s an academic center, which allowed me to continue to grow the skills I developed back home at Geisinger.”
Dr. Snyder was a founding member of a mental health task force at Geisinger School of Medicine during the pandemic. She was class president, and saw that students were struggling to adapt. When she moved to Seattle, she built a similar peer support network. Her work is also now embedded in the residency curriculum and has resulted in research she’s presented at two conferences.
“I was told by (assistant dean of student affairs) Julia Kolcharno that we should never understate the importance of adaptability,” she said. “That’s been, single-handedly, the most helpful skill I learned in medical school.”
Alfred Ngo-Hamilton, MD ’22, MBS ’17
‘Seeking out leadership began at Geisinger’
Alfred Ngo-Hamilton, MD ’22, may be a born leader, but he credits his MBS and medical school experiences with drawing those innate abilities out.
“My way of approaching education actually started in the MBS program at Geisinger,” he said. “I’m able to critically think and take a holistic approach to my patients, in addition to my strong foundational knowledge in the clinical sciences. I also began to seek leadership positions in Geisinger.”
Dr. Ngo-Hamilton was president of his medical class and then the student body general president. In residency, he was resident representative, then a participant in the Resident Leadership Academy at University of Minnesota Medical School. He was also elected to the AAMC’s RISE program, a leadership experience for fourth-year medical students.
“RISE showed me there are different types of leaders,” he said. “You can be a leader who is emotionally present. You can be a leader who’s very logistical and makes easy step-by-step plans for people to reach certain goals. You can be a leader who bolsters people’s sails and keeps them motivated. I feel like I try to incorporate a little bit of all those things.”
With his eyes now set on a cardiology fellowship, Dr. Ngo-Hamilton hopes to also continue his work as a leader and a mentor. “With these experiences and many more, I’ll carve out a path for myself wherever I go,” he said.
Molly Kropp Lopez, MD ’23, MBS ’19
‘The days are long, but the years are short’ - Surgical resident sees herself in every medical student she mentors
Now a PGY2 general surgery resident at Geisinger, Molly Kropp Lopez, MD, can’t believe the changes she’s gone through since graduating from the School of Medicine in 2023. She performs surgeries and finds herself suddenly in the role of mentor.
“I definitely see myself in the medical students who rotate with me,” she said. “And I laugh because the days are long, but the years are short, and this last year just flew by. I know I’m relatively close to where this medical student is, but it feels like a lifetime ago. It also makes me reflect on how much I’ve learned in a single year.”
Fortunately, as a mentor, Dr. Lopez can reassure students that although the transition to residency is hard, their medical school prepares them well.
“Transitioning from medical student to resident is huge,” she said. “I don’t really think there’s much in the way of preparing you. My first surgery — there were so many nerves. I really do think so much of residency is a mental game. In medical school, we talked so much about imposter syndrome and that’s still something I battle. But our medical school prepared me — it also really does well teaching us the importance of interdisciplinary actions and how to be on a team.”
Above all, Dr. Lopez is happy with her career and education choices. “More than anything, I love surgery in and of itself,” she said. “It’s such a team sport, and the biggest thing is having support from not only my co-interns but the upper residents too. We are a tight-knit group. I couldn’t imagine doing residency without them.”
Alison Barrett, MD ’24
From childhood bus rider to Geisinger graduate
Alison Barrett, MD ’24, remembers riding past the medical school’s Medical Sciences Building construction site on her school bus.
“Growing up, I’d go to community events, and we started to see medical students there,” she said. “I was curious about them and the things they did to support the community.”
After college, Dr. Barrett worked at a Federally Qualified Health Center in Philadelphia. That experience, courtesy of AmeriCorps, introduced her to the urgent need for primary healthcare. She was also inspired to return to her hometown and the medical school she saw grow throughout her childhood.
“The idea of being able to be a medical student in this town where I grew up and being surrounded by friends and family while also being a medical student was a very important aspect of the journey,” she said.
Dr. Barrett and her cousin, Alexis Notarianni, MD ’24, were the first of a tight-knit group of Scranton childhood friends who were accepted at Geisinger School of Medicine. Behind them are Kate Patterson, MD ’25 and Marena Casey, MD ’26
Dr. Barrett is completing an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. As an Abigail Geisinger Scholar, she has promised to return to her hometown in a few years.
“I think medicine is only as strong as the community that’s around it,” she said. “The people living in our communities have to be able to trust the medical field. I had that idea when I was in Philadelphia of how much community medicine can impact a community but now — being able to bring those ideas back to Scranton — it’s like everything has come full circle.”
