Internal Medicine Residents & Message From Chief Residents
Meet our Internal Medicine Residents
Rami Abusaleh, MD
Chelsea Azevedo, MD
Nicholas Bowman, DO
Sailendra Chundu, DO
Fiorella Estrada, MD
Tyler Harwood, DO
Maham Khan, MBBS
Mithin Mathew, DO
Jawairia Sahar Mirza, MBBS
Esther Oben, MD
Patrick Pathappillil, MD
Betsie Ruiz, MD
Sandy Simon, DO
Marco Valdez Espinoza, MD
Omar Asad, DO
Murali Ranjani Behara, MBBS
Monica Camille Cavarlez, MD
Eric Dong, DO
Syeda Fatima, MBBS
Moiz Javed, MBBS
Jaziel Llanes Hernandez, MD
Galib Mirza, DO
Ali Moradi, DO
Kishan Patel, MBBS
Suvarna Rekha Puvvada, MD
Ashley Scholtens, MD
Emma Smith, DO
Jumanah Abuasbeh, MD, MPH
Matthew Barvo, MD
Selina Deanda, DO
Brett Dinner, MD
Blessing Eze, MD
Waleed Ikram, MBBS
Anne Jarvis, MD
Robert Lee, MD
Quinta Mbah, MD
Vaibhav Murali, MD
Hannah Murphy, MD
Linda Nguyen, MD
Austin Saugstad, DO
Jacob Slizewski, MD
Nicholas Tan, MD
Aisha Yusuf, DO
Diana Zamora, MD
Mohieddin Albarazi, MBBS
Christopher Biggs, DO
Brady Dennison, DO
Sunanda Ellina, MBBS
Mohammed Wajid Hussain, MBBS
Clayton James, MD
Ivan Landa, DO
Phillip Leff, DO
Javier Munoz, MD
Abilash Muralidharan, MBBS
Richard Ngo, MD
Deepika Razia, MBBS
Divya Shastri, MBBS
Ariba Surtee, MBBS
Tommy Toma, DO
Wali Zaidi, MBBS
Edgar Amavizca, MD
Bryce Beatty, DO
Julien Bourgeois, MD
Alonso Carreras Gonzalez, MD
Silpa Choday, MD
Ashley Ezekpo, MD
Ashlei Howard, MD
Austin Le, MD
Heather Ledterman, DO
Mercedes Martinez Gil, MD
Kyle Oi, MD
Alison Russell, DO
Mustafa Suppah, MBBCh
Ariana Thompson, MD
Mark Wagoner, MD
Brandon Walls, MD
Ragul Yuvaraj, MD
Jocelyn Andrews, DO
Tyler Bendrick, MD
Stephen Bruce, MD
Siegried Chin, MD
Abigail D’souza, MD
Edy Hatem, MD
Ashna Joy, MBBS
Zachary Lebaron, MD
Neil Makwana, DO
Carmold Murray, MD
Amla Patel, MBBS
Ramandeep Sandhu, MBBS
Malak Tahsin, MD
Merica Vorachitti, MD
Mikhayla Walker, DO
Anthony Yeung, MD
Message from the Chief Residents
Hello and welcome to the Internal Medicine program at the Creighton University Arizona Health Education Alliance! As the Chief Residents for the 2023-2024 academic year, we’re happy to have this space to tell you more about our program and highlight just a few of the many things that we feel make this a great place to train.
Our Residents
We have a wonderfully diverse and friendly group of residents who work together as a collaborative, cohesive unit serving a highly diverse patient population. It is important to us to create a patient care and learning culture where residents and medical students feel comfortable asking questions as they develop their knowledge and skills, and where they enjoy the people they work with. This collegiality for each other and our clinical teams extends naturally to the compassionate care of our patients and their families. Current and former residents take pride in the camaraderie that exists in our training program and remain connected long after residency training. In addition to being friendly, our residents have attained the highest ABIM Board pass rate in the state of Arizona. The culture for patient care and learning is unmatched.
Our Program
Our clinical training takes place in a variety of settings which include inpatient wards, the intensive care unit, the emergency room, the ambulatory clinic, and top-notch subspecialty and community rotations. Our program is unique in that there is a continuous focus on creating new program elements in response to resident, medical and societal needs. Our curriculum is rigorous. It includes an interactive, case-based Morning Report, Morbidity and Mortality Conferences, Quality Improvement Conferences, Journal Clubs, and Research conferences to support scholarly activity. Resident attendance and participation at regional and national conferences are also supported. Our program also provides residents with multiple resources for board preparation and frequent opportunities for feedback on their medical knowledge. Our Resident Wellness Program ensures that residents maintain a strong focus on their most ambitious personal and professional goals. All elements combined, our program is designed to prepare residents superbly for life as independent and team-oriented, well-balanced, practitioners or sub-specialty fellows.
Our Medical Students
Together, St. Joseph’s Hospital and Valleywise Health Center comprise the regional academic campus for Creighton University School of Medicine (Omaha, Nebraska). Creighton University has created a fully operational campus that offers two full years of clinical training to 84 third- and fourth-year medical students and will soon provide pre-clinical training to first- and second-year students as well. We also provide fourth-year electives and rotations for The University of Arizona College of Medicine and more than 20 other U.S. medical schools. Our medical students bring energy and enthusiasm for learning and patient care. To provide the best education for our students, residents participate in training workshops both as educators and evaluators and provide inpatient, small group, conference and simulation teaching for our students.
Our City
And finally: Phoenix, Arizona, is known for its diversity, fabulous climate, and its friendly culture. There are 299 days of sunshine per year that you can spend hiking, rock climbing and golfing, and you won’t want to miss the annual WM Phoenix Open. Phoenix is also home to the Phoenix Suns, the Arizona Cardinals and the Arizona Diamondbacks.
When you want to get away from the city, Sedona, Prescott and the Grand Canyon are just a day trip away. There are plenty of activities and diverse destinations to explore. We invite you to join an amazing residency program in one of the most livable cities in the country.
Chief’s Letter
Though we have distinct personalities, allegiances and interests that set us apart, we share one commonality—we all chose Creighton Internal Medicine in Phoenix as a fundamental component of our training to help us achieve our end goals of Pulmonary Critical Care, Hospital Medicine, Gastroenterology and Palliative Medicine.
We are fortunate enough to rotate at two major hospital systems within Phoenix: St. Joseph, a Dignity Health system, and Valleywise Health, a former county hospital that covers a large portion of the underserved. These two hospital systems allow us to mold our practices to become a well-rounded physician by providing the gold standard of care all the while appreciating the social determinants of health affecting the population we serve.
The uniqueness of this program does not just stop there—we also recruit across the world providing us with a diverse set of residents and faculty who promote cultural awareness, ideas and appreciation of others that gets incorporated into our daily practice as physicians-in-training.
Our training also provides us with protected didactic time with clinical and didactic conferences that alternate every other day of the week. These noon reports encompass Journal Clubs, Mortality and Morbidity conferences, Quality Improvement research, Grand Rounds, and guest speakers to name some of the few.
When we are not immersed in our learnings, our program makes it a priority to provide us with opportunities to enjoy Phoenix. From a short drive to nearby local hiking trails such as Piewesta Peak, Camelback and South Mountain, we are also 90-minutes away from Sedona, a city with the only blue McDonalds in the world due to the entrancing beauty of the red rocks in the winter that gets covered in...snow!
The fun in Arizona doesn’t stop at hikes. Phoenix offers a diverse set of restaurants and bars that caters to all foodies. From hole-in-the-walls to Michelin-star restaurants, we are at the epicenter of great food and drinks; luckily they are only a hop and skip away by car!
I hope our brief introduction provides an insight into our community of residents. Our program fosters cohesiveness through not only the patients we take care of but also the diversity of our colleagues to mold a strong bond between us as we progress through our training as lifelong learners.
Sincerely,
Chief Residents
