Rheumatology Awards, Appointments & Announcements for Feb. 2018

Dr. Khananian’s experiential approach to life and work was evident in her undergrad years at McGill University in Montreal. She had already decided on medicine as a career, but worked as an EMS first responder to see if she liked hands-on treatment as opposed to pharmacology, for example. She chose the medical side instead of surgery because she likes the “demands of the theoretical process of thinking through the problems of multi-system diseases,” she says.

The complexity of the pathology made rheumatology attractive. “Dealing with chronic patients, you get to know them, to bond with them,” says Dr. Khananian. “At the end of the day, you’ve connected to people more than if you’d written a prescription for an antibiotic.”

The surprises she has encountered are the number of comormidities patients have and how warm and friendly everyone in California has been. She’s really liking California and just may stay.

Rheumatologist Moves to West Virginia

Naseem Alexa Jahdi, DO, is now the sole rheumatologist at West Virginia University Medicine University Healthcare Physicians in Martinsburg, W.Va. She will be on staff at Berkeley Medical Center in Martinsburg and Jefferson Medical Center in Ranson, W.Va.

Dr. Jahdi had been an attending physician for three years at rheumatology practices in Annapolis, Md., and Fredericksburg, Va. She decided she was ready to “give up the comfort of having others to lean on,” she says, “to move on with more autonomy to structure my practice the way I see best.”

During her third year at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Erie, Pa., Dr. Jahdi was getting ready to undertake a gastroenterology fellowship. She took a rheumatology course as an elective. “Within a matter of weeks,” she says, “I knew I wanted to be a rheumatologist. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I gave up the GI fellowship and started looking into rheumatology opportunities,” Dr. Jahdi says. “The whole dynamic of rheumatology care is something I hadn’t felt in other rotations.”

Her work provides her with satisfaction from the new developments in treatment that offer improvement to her patients’ quality of life.

Ann-Marie Lindstrom is an independent writer and editor based near Tucson, Ariz.