Medical school alumni share their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic

The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine has 240 alumni physicians working in hospitals and clinics across the country from its six graduating classes thus far, with another 45 from the class of 2020 soon joining them. They are in residencies and fellowships, and some are now attendings in private practice in every major specialty of medicine. The current COVID-19 pandemic has changed how each of them do their jobs, in big and small ways.

Nine of the alumni, currently located on the West Coast to the East Coast and in between, offered their perspective of how the pandemic is affecting them professionally and personally. Their stories are divided into a three-part story series.

• Part one contains three stories from the West Coast. 
• Part two shares stories three from the Midwest and Northeast. 
• Part three focuses on the Greater Washington, D.C., metro area and Roanoke, Virginia.

Part One: West Coast

Brian Connor, class of 2019, is an internal medicine resident at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. 

Andrew Moore, class of 2014, is an attending emergency medicine physician finishing up his second year of a research fellowship at the Center for Policy and Research at Oregon Health and Science University. 

Jonathan Hootman, class of 2018, is an emergency medicine resident at Stanford University, where he works in three different emergency departments in Santa Clara County, California.

Part Two: Midwest and Northeast

Kevin McGurk, VTCSOM class of 2017, is an emergency medicine resident and rising chief resident at Cook County Health in Chicago, Illinois.

Vandana Kumar, class of 2018, is a second-year psychiatry resident at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. In addition to the university hospital, she also works at the public hospital, Kings County Hospital.

Jim Light, class of 2014, is an attending physician anesthesiologist and interventional pain specialist in a multispecialty private practice in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Part Three: Greater Washington, D.C. metro area and Roanoke

Lindsey DeGeorge, class of 2015 is an attending physician one of MedStar’s community hospitals just outside of Washington, D.C. 

Her husband Robbie Varipapa, also from the class of 2015, is in his second year of a pulmonary critical care fellowship with Georgetown University Hospital within the district.

Jessica Nguyen, class of 2017, is finishing up her last year of residency as chief residency in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, Virginia.