Fellow Spotlight: Elizabeth Wittrock, DO
During her fourth year in medical school, an ICU rotation motivated Elizabeth Wittrock, DO, to pursue a subspecialty she has loved ever since: Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. After setting out on this track during residency, Wittrock was ready to direct her enthusiasm wherever the fellowship match took her. Still, she recalls being particularly excited when she matched to Iowa’s Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care program.
Her husband is an Iowa native and a “huge Hawkeye fan,” but that was just one part of the draw.
“I have hoped to match at Iowa since medical school,” Wittrock said. “Iowa has always produced great clinicians, and my faculty mentors as a resident were so happy when I matched here. They knew that I was going to receive a really good education.”
As Wittrock looks toward graduation in the summer, she can now say that her fellowship experience at UI Health Care lived up to the anticipation.
A bit of everything
Working with every organ system is one aspect of critical care that Wittrock loves. She also finds that the ICU’s demand for swift, creative decision-making uniquely strengthens skills such as self-reflection and persistence. The environment’s unpredictability has reinforced what she believes is most important: treating every patient encounter as a learning opportunity.
“In the ICU, things don’t go how you plan; or, you can do everything right, and things still don’t work out,” Wittrock said. “You get pushed to be a better physician for the next patient, over and over. Then, all you learn in the ICU rolls over into the clinic, too.”
Wittrock has also enjoyed taking on research opportunities with Nabeel Hamzeh, MD, Professor in Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational Medicine. Her current project with Hamzeh investigates the prevalence of cognitive dysfunction in people with sarcoidosis. In a corresponding study, the two examine metabolic MRIs for brain activity and relevant metabolites, comparing people diagnosed with sarcoidosis and experiencing cognitive dysfunction to controls.
As she transitions to a faculty appointment at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Pulmonary and Critical Care division, Wittrock will continue building on this research. She will draw on her master’s in nutrition and exercise to study whether certain exercise modalities and anti-inflammatory diets improve symptoms of cognitive dysfunction in sarcoidosis.
Why Iowa?
Whether at the clinic or ICU, Wittrock said UI offers a broad range of opportunities for clinical learning—exceptional mentors, a wide breadth of pathologies and diseases, and experience working in various types of ICUs.
What makes these opportunities so conducive to growth, she said, is the independence the program grants.
“It is a well-graded autonomy,” she said. “In the first couple of weeks, especially as somebody who did not train here for residency, I had so many questions. I was learning the basics of the hospital system itself—where things were, different policies. It was nice to have a little bit more supervision from the faculty at that point. But then once you get your feet under you, they are very good at recognizing that and letting you have more autonomy.”
Guidance from division faculty also enriched Wittrock’s experience. She is grateful to Charles Rappaport, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, and Kevin Doerschug, MD, MS, Clinical Associate Professor and Associate Chief Quality Officer, for their ICU mentorship. For their clinical, research, and life guidance, Wittrock is deeply appreciative of Fellowship Program Director Alicia Gerke, MD, MBA, Clinical Associate Professor Kimberly M. Baker- El Abiad, MD, and Hamzeh—among many others.
