Current Residents

 

Alexander Baradei, M.D.

Email: baradei@musc.edu

Dr. Baradei was born in San Francisco, California. He received his Bachelor of Science in Biopsychology from the University of California Santa Barbara; afterward, he spent three years in deployment overseas working for the US Department of Defense as a liaison, linguist, instructor, and cultural advisor. During this time, he helped build partnerships between US military personnel and US Allied Forces. He also worked with the US State Department to facilitate the safe movement of refugees in the region. Once he returned home, he pursued a master's degree, conducted research, taught genetics, and then attended medical school at the Florida State University College of Medicine.

In medical school, he served as junior faculty for the gross anatomy lab and Clinical Skills Learning Center. He was also elected to represent his class in redesigning the school’s basic medical science curriculum and later was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. During his medical training, Dr. Baradei noticed that the medical field’s categorization of human pathology created an arbitrary mind-body divide. He decided to pursue a career fully immersed in both psychiatry and internal medicine to embody a unique holistic mind-body and patient-based approach to help achieve a comprehensive state of well-being for his patients. He also hopes to find innovative ways to transform how we think about, approach, and teach medicine.

Dr. Baradei feels incredibly fortunate to join the MUSC family and is humbled every day by the intelligence, hard work, and tenacity of his co-residents and colleagues. His fields of interest include Consult Liaison Psychiatry, Interventional Psychiatry, Inpatient Psychiatry, and Inpatient Med-Psych Units. Outside of medicine, he enjoys biking, cooking, traveling, and watching science fiction movies.

 

 

George Book, MD (Chief Resident)

Email: bookg@musc.edu

Dr. Book grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, just across the river from MUSC in West Ashley. After graduating from Academic Magnet High School in 2011, he pursued a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the University of Florida (Go Gators!). After UF and a brief stint working in the Charleston City Market, George attended MUSC for medical school. He became interested in internal medicine and psychiatry after working with combined residents at the student-run CARES clinic during his M1 year. His medical interests include primary care, brain stimulation, and hospitalist medicine. His non-medical interests include exploring Charleston’s beaches and woodlands with his kids, trail running, and college football.

PGY 4

 

Zola Francis, M.D.

Email: francisz@musc.edu

Dr. Francis was born in Queens, New York, but spent most of her childhood in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida with her parents and older sister. She is Caribbean-American and is of Guyanese-Vincentian descent. She moved to Georgia during her teenage years where she finished her last two years of high school, before attending the Georgia Institute of Technology for college. She graduated from Georgia Tech in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and then attended the Medical College of Georgia for medical school. She is a member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society and served as president of her school's chapter of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. She is interested in community outreach particularly as it relates to issues of homelessness and especially in populations that are affected by mental illness and substance use disorders; population health and ways to increase public and individual awareness of common chronic psychiatric and medical conditions; academic medicine; mentorship programs; and pipeline programs. She enjoys spending time with family, having small (in-person and virtual) gatherings with friends, reading fantasy novels, mentoring students, and doing crafting projects.

 

Andrew Kern, M.D.

Email: kerna@musc.edu

Dr. Kern is a husband to his amazing wife, Dr. Megan Kern, an Internal Medicine-Pediatrics resident at MUSC, and father to two beautiful children, Jamie and Scarlett. He enjoys going to the beach with his family and rock climbing in his free time. He has lived almost his entire life in South Carolina and has completed all of his education here. He studied neuroscience at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, where he also played upright bass in the symphony orchestra. His interest in psychiatry and his passion for addressing mental illness stigma led him to apply to medical school at MUSC. He chose to pursue combined residency training in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry because of his interest in the interplay between mental health and other dimensions of patient well-being. Dr. Kern feels fortunate to train with such empathetic and knowledgeable co-residents and faculty at MUSC. He is involved in the Diversity in Addiction Research Training (DART) program, conducting a randomized controlled trial of bright light therapy on depression in elderly patients hospitalized for major depressive disorder. Dr. Kern strives to be the kind of physician that he would feel comfortable recommending to family and friends.

PGY 3

 

Ruth Bishop, M.D.

Email: bishopru@musc.edu

Dr. Bishop is originally from Shreveport, LA, and attended the University of Alabama where she studied Spanish and biology and pursued a master's in business administration through the STEM-path to an MBA program at Manderson business school. She then worked as an ESL teacher for a year in Medellin, Colombia, through the Fulbright program before matriculating at the University of Michigan Medical School. In medical school, she found a home within the organization Wolverine Street Medicine (WSM), which provided mobile health outreach and social services to people experiencing housing insecurity. She was moved by the patients she met through her work in WSM and found herself wanting to transcend the division between pathologies of the mind and body as a physician. She could think of no better way to do this than through combined training in Medicine and Psychiatry.

Her academic interests include addiction, health policy reform, health equity, research, and medical education. Outside the hospital, she enjoys salsa dancing, hiking, cooking with friends, watching telenovelas, playing piano, and snuggle time with her cat, Suki. She has been impressed by the kindness, generosity, and brilliance of her co-residents and is thankful for the opportunity to pursue dual training at MUSC.

 

Erik Olsen, M.D.

Email: olsene@musc.edu

Dr. Olsen grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. At the University of Georgia, he majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and minored in History, partly because the history department building was on the prettier half of campus and students there were less stressed. While in Athens, he helped lead a Christian nonprofit that worked to build friendships with the local homeless population and saw firsthand the devastation at the intersection of poor mental health, untreated chronic disease, and poverty. With this experience compelling him, he discovered a well-suited specialty in combined Internal Medicine-Psychiatry while studying at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. His professional interests currently include integrating psychiatry and Pulmonary-Critical Care along with primary care and hospitalist work. He is thankful for opportunities to continue to spend time with folks in underserved populations through volunteer clinics in Charleston. Outside of work, he loves to spend time outside - be that road tripping, hiking, biking, surfing, running, or walking - with his wife. They love their faith community, watching college football with new and old friends, and their Dalmatian Dolly that never seems to get tired.

PGY 2

 

Gabrielle Ghabash, M.D.

Email: ghabash@musc.edu

Dr. Ghabash is from Salt Lake City, Utah. She completed dual degrees in Biology and Chemistry at the University of Utah and pursued tropical ecology research after graduating. She loved working in the rain forest, but experiences with loved ones and the sense of purpose she found while working at a free clinic caused her to change course. She completed medical school at the University of Utah. She was fascinated by the interactions between physical and mental health but was frustrated by what felt like the unnecessary and sometimes harmful separation of these aspects of health. She is excited to have found a residency program that nurtures a broad skill set to address the varied needs an individual has. She is grateful to be a part of a program that embraces the interactions between physical, mental, social, and environmental factors that impact wellness and disease. She is interested in providing a medical home for those with severe and persistent mental illness.

Outside of medicine, Gabby loves everything outdoors-- hiking, camping, skiing, kayaking, and spending time with her dog and boyfriend. She is excited to be close to a beach and is still able to get her fix of mountains on longer weekends. She also loves many things indoors including visual art (particularly printmaking), horror podcasts, and trying to make the perfect home-made vegan chicken nugget.

 

Abby Truitt, M.D.

Email: truitta@musc.edu

Dr. Abby Truitt is originally from Columbia, SC. She attended Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC where she majored in Biology and added an Art History minor after a sophomore trip to Rome, Italy. During medical school at MUSC, the connection between physical and mental illness became apparent and she was inspired by the unique patient care approach of dual-trained residents and faculty to pursue combined training. Her professional interests include addiction, CL psychiatry, general hospital medicine, brainstem, and medical education. Outside of the hospital, she enjoys baking, crafts of all kinds, trying new brunch places, and going on walks in downtown Charleston.

PGY 1

 

Lee Burnett, M.D.

Email: burnettp@musc.edu

Dr. Burnett hails from rural Ohio and still considers himself a Midwesterner, despite living most of his life in North Carolina. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he joined the US Navy and worked in nuclear power, special operations, and cybersecurity before choosing to leave the military to pursue a career in medicine. While attending medical school back at UNC, he appreciated the growing need for integrated psychiatric and somatic medical care, crucial for the treatment of somatoform disorders and somatic illness complicated by psychiatric distress. Other interests within medicine include Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), LGBT care, and care for veterans. A former personal trainer, Dr. Burnett enjoys weightlifting and full-contact martial arts in his free time. His creative outlets include cooking, 3D-printing, and hydroponic farming.

 

Nikalina O'Brien, MD

Dr. Nikalina O’Brien grew up in Austin, Texas. She majored in Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M Corpus Christi and credits the time she spent working abroad in marine tourism and scuba diving with drawing her into medicine, science, and conservation. While completing medical school at Baylor College of Medicine, she found joy in writing poetry, sharing fun facts about soil and plants during community garden tours, and helping create and lead a course on ecological perspectives of health and social justice. Nikalina has always been interested in exploring the connections between the mind, body, and environment and how these connections can be used to effect change for individuals and guide us in creating a better world. Pursuing training in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry felt like a natural progression following this interest. Her professional interests include hospital medicine, brain stimulation and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and narrative medicine. Outside the hospital, she loves to road bike, spend time on the beach or in the mountains, and experiment with arts and crafts.