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Internal Medicine Residents & Message From Chief Residents

Year 3 Residents

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Rami Abusaleh

Rami Abusaleh, MD

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Chelsea Azevedo

Chelsea Azevedo, MD

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Nicholas Bowman

Nicholas Bowman, DO

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Sailendra Chundu

Sailendra Chundu, DO

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Fiorella Estrada

Fiorella Estrada, MD

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Tyler Harwood

Tyler Harwood, DO

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Maham Khan

Maham Khan, MBBS

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Mithin Mathew

Mithin Mathew, DO

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Jawairia Sahar Mirza

Jawairia Sahar Mirza, MBBS

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Esther Oben

Esther Oben, MD

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Patrick Pathappillil

Patrick Pathappillil, MD

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Betsie Ruiz

Betsie Ruiz, MD

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Sandy Simon

Sandy Simon, DO

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Marco Valdez Espinoza

Marco Valdez Espinoza, MD

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Omar Asad

Omar Asad, DO

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Murali Ranjani Behara

Murali Ranjani Behara, MBBS

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Monica Camille Cavarlez

Monica Camille Cavarlez, MD

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Eric Dong

Eric Dong, DO

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Syeda Fatima

Syeda Fatima, MBBS

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Moiz Javed

Moiz Javed, MBBS

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Jaziel Llanes Hernandez

Jaziel Llanes Hernandez, MD

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Galib Mirza

Galib Mirza, DO

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Ali Moradi

Ali Moradi, DO

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Kishan Patel

Kishan Patel, MBBS

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Suvarna Rekha Puvvada

Suvarna Rekha Puvvada, MD

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Ashley Scholtens

Ashley Scholtens, MD

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Emma Smith

Emma Smith, DO

Year 2 Residents

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Jumanah Abuasbeh

Jumanah Abuasbeh, MD, MPH

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Matt Barvo

Matthew Barvo, MD

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Selina Deanda

Selina Deanda, DO

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Brett Dinner

Brett Dinner, MD

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Blessing Eze

Blessing Eze, MD

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Waleed Ikram

Waleed Ikram, MBBS

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Anne Jarvis

Anne Jarvis, MD

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Robert Lee

Robert Lee, MD

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Quin Mbah

Quinta Mbah, MD

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Vaibhav Murali

Vaibhav Murali, MD

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Hannah Murphy

Hannah Murphy, MD

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Linda Nguyễn

Linda Nguyen, MD

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Austin Saugstad

Austin Saugstad, DO

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Jacob Slizewski

Jacob Slizewski, MD

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Nicholas Tan

Nicholas Tan, MD

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Aisha Yusuf

Aisha Yusuf, DO

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Diane Zamora

Diana Zamora, MD

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Mohi Albarazi

Mohieddin Albarazi, MBBS

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Christopher Biggs

Christopher Biggs, DO

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Brady Dennison

Brady Dennison, DO

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Sunanda Ellina

Sunanda Ellina, MBBS

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Mohammed Hussain

Mohammed Wajid Hussain, MBBS

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Clayton James

Clayton James, MD

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Ivan Landa

Ivan Landa, DO

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Phillip Leff

Phillip Leff, DO

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Javier Munoz

Javier Munoz, MD

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Abilash Muralidharan

Abilash Muralidharan, MBBS

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Richard Ngo

Richard Ngo, MD

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Deepika Razia

Deepika Razia, MBBS

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Divya Shastri

Divya Shastri, MBBS

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Aribee Surtee

Ariba Surtee, MBBS

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Tommy Toma

Tommy Toma, DO

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Wali Zaidi

Wali Zaidi, MBBS

Year 1 Residents

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Edgar Amavizca

Edgar Amavizca, MD

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Bryce Beatty

Bryce Beatty, DO

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Julien Bourgeois

Julien Bourgeois, MD

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Alonso Carreras Gonzalez

Alonso Carreras Gonzalez, MD

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Silpa Choday

Silpa Choday, MD

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Ashley Ezekpo

Ashley Ezekpo, MD

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Ashlei Howard

Ashlei Howard, MD

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Austin Le

Austin Le, MD

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Heather Ledterman

Heather Ledterman, DO

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Mercedes Martinez Gill

Mercedes Martinez Gil, MD

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Kyle Oi

Kyle Oi, MD

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Allison Russell

Alison Russell, DO

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Mustafa-Suppah

Mustafa Suppah, MBBCh

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Ariana Thompson

Ariana Thompson, MD

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Mark Wagoner

Mark Wagoner, MD

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Brandon Walls

Brandon Walls, MD

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Ragul Yuvaraj

Ragul Yuvaraj, MD

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Jocelyn Andrews

Jocelyn Andrews, DO

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Tyler Bendrick

Tyler Bendrick, MD

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Stephen Bruce

Stephen Bruce, MD

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Siegried Chin

Siegried Chin, MD

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Abigail D’souza

Abigail D’souza, MD

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Edy Hatem

Edy Hatem, MD

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Ashna Joy

Ashna Joy, MBBS

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Zachary Lebaron

Zachary Lebaron, MD

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Neil Makwana

Neil Makwana, DO

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Carmold Murray

Carmold Murray, MD

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Amla Patel

Amla Patel, MBBS

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Ramandeep Sandhu

Ramandeep Sandhu, MBBS

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Malak Tashin

Malak Tahsin, MD

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Merica Vorachitti

Merica Vorachitti, MD

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Mikhayla Walker

Mikhayla Walker, DO

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Anthony Yeung

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

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