John Gillespie, MD ’10, has witnessed the wonder of plastic surgery firsthand. His grandmother, diagnosed with breast cancer, underwent a double mastectomy in 2003, and upon having her breasts removed, he recalls, “she wasn’t the same woman I knew before the surgery.”

Not long after, though, she opted for a second operation—breast reconstruction. With it, she bounced back and “became the vibrant woman I once knew.”

“She was back her smiling old self,” Dr. Gillespie said. “I saw how the reconstructive surgery rejuvenated her and how it can change people’s lives for the better. In some cases, patients feel as though their lives are taken from them, and plastic and reconstructive surgery can return their lives to normal and give them a sense of well-being despite their hardships.”

Now a fifth-year surgery resident at Christiana Care Hospital Center in Newark, DE, Dr. Gillespie looks forward to lifting the spirits of his patients beginning this summer when he starts a plastic surgery fellowship at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. The field includes a wide range of operations, from body contouring, cleft lip and palate repair, repair of craniosynostosis (skull reconstruction) for newborns and reconstruction of cancer and trauma patients.

“It’s almost indescribable,” Dr. Gillespie said. “I went through life reaching all my goals, but I knew that this was a far-reaching goal. I was nervous about it. However, now that I’ve accomplished it, it’s just the most amazing feeling.”

Dr. Gillespie came to SGU from the University of Delaware, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences in 2006. He admits to feeling apprehensive about leaving the US to obtain his education in Grenada, a country about which he knew very little.

“Looking back on it, it was an unbelievable learning experience,” he said. “It was a great place to train, and I became friends with people from every walk of life. SGU brings everybody together under one solid premise: to learn and to become a well-rounded doctor.”

Dr. Gillespie gained a strong foundation in basic sciences during his two years in Grenada, and went on to New York City for his clinical rotations, predominantly spent at Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn. He shined on his USMLEs, scoring in the 90th percentile or better on each exam. When it came time for residency, Dr. Gillespie went on 12 interviews, turning down others. He was delighted to learn that he was heading home, matching in surgery at Christiana Care, his top choice.

In addition to his time there, Dr. Gillespie has done two plastic surgery rotations, one at Temple, which solidified his interest in both the field of plastic surgery as well as the institution, and another at Johns Hopkins University. The fellowship is only the latest item on his to-do list that he can check off, which he is happy to do so emphatically. He is ready for the challenge.

“Plastics gives you the ability to own the entire body,” Dr. Gillespie said. “You’re operating on people from head to toe, and therefore you have to know everything.”

Published September 2015

Jessica Best is back to where it all began—literally. After the 2012 St. George’s University graduate completed her emergency medicine residency at at University Medical Center Brackenridge (UMCB) in Austin, Texas, the very hospital in which she was born, she has moved on to become an attending who works as an EM physician in the community.

Dr. Best is thrilled that her medical career has led her back to Austin. She and her ER cohorts treat patients who suffer from a wide range of difficulties, from trauma resuscitation and motor vehicle injuries to less acute medical problems such as abdominal pain or throat discomfort.

“I really like seeing patients of all ages and all walks of life,” Dr. Best said. “In the ER, it can be something very benign to something that requires the entire department to resuscitate. You have to come to work to be ready for just about anything, and I think that’s what’s really exciting.”

Born in Texas but raised in Colorado, Dr. Best earned her Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from the University of Colorado before going on to obtain her master’s degree in chemistry. She then enrolled in St. George’s University of Grenada School of Medicine/Northumbria University Program, which she said she “absolutely loved.” It allowed her to spend her first year of basic sciences at Northumbria University in the UK before advancing to Grenada’s True Blue campus and then New York for clinical rotations.

In addition, she participated in SGU’s two-week elective in Thailand, one of many international learning opportunities. Dr. Best has carried her interest in global health into her career. In December 2013, Dr. Best spent a month treating patients at Daeyang Luke Hospital, a village clinic, and a prison clinic in Malawi, a developing African country with a high rate of infectious disease and a lack of resources. She hopes to make additional visits to Malawi to continue making strides toward improved health care.

“The experience was extremely rewarding,” Dr. Best said. “The people were so excited to see us, and it was great because of the care we provided and because we were able to share knowledge with base medical personnel. At the same time, it was difficult because we knew the effects we had were only short term because a lot of the problems that people faced were chronic.”

Dr. Best is an active member of SGU’s Alumni Admission Mentor Program (AAMP), for which graduates take part in information sessions, webinars, career fairs, and other events around the globe to recruit the best and brightest students to SGU. One day, she hopes to give back to her alma mater by teaching emergency medicine at SGU.

“I was able to live and learn in all these wonderful places, and form an opinion on what works and what doesn’t,” she said. “I’m happy to share my experience with prospective students.”

She frequently visits her SGU friends, who have gone on to practice all over the country. “One of the greatest best things that came out of SGU was the friends I have made. They are from all over the world. We like to discuss the difficult medical encounters we may have had, and as they are all in different specialities, I have a lifeline I can trust when needed.”

Published November 2014

Jason Finkelstein grew up in Long Island, New York and elected to stay in state as he earned his Bachelor of Science in biology from Binghamton University. Studying hard, Jason graduated with a 3.68. Although he applied to dozens of medical schools in the United States, he made his decision to attend St. George’s after speaking to a former student who only had good things to say about the St. George’s University. Jason was accepted for the August class of 1995. “I went on a whim… All I knew was what was said to me,” he recalls. “I knew if I didn’t like it I could always come back.” Although his trip to Grenada was not his first time traveling outside the United States, he was excited to experience and live in a new culture.

Although it was a change from New York, Jason says, “It worked out great.” He was pleasantly surprised to discover his classmates came from some of the top Ivy League schools in the US and a lot of professors were from US schools as well. He also commented on how available professors were to help students. “They had their own office hours for extra help and counseling, and the department of education services had additional tutors.” Living outside the US and studying at SGU gave Dr. Finkelstein the motivation to pursue his personal and professional goals. Aside from the diverse student body and culture experiences at St. George’s University, Dr. Finkelstein commented on how “even during my clinical rotations in inner city hospitals, I was definitely exposed to an impressive variety of patients and I had the ability to gain more hands-on experience than if I was in a US medical school.”

While in Grenada, he volunteered his time by visiting orphanages with a group of St. George’s students, working with children who didn’t have a family and trying to put a smile on their faces. He did not know anyone when he first arrived in Grenada, but quickly made life-long friends. He continues to remain in close contact with this network of fellow classmates.

Jason graduated from St. George’s University in 1999 and came to be the first doctor in his family. He completed an internal medicine residency at MCP Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During his residency he became more interested in cardiology and decided to take a Cardiology Fellowship at Tulane University’s Health Sciences Center for three years. In 2006, he also finished an interventional cardiology fellowship at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Indianapolis. Currently, Jason is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases and Nuclear Cardiology. He specializes in preventative cardiology and percutaneous coronary intervention, and is currently in private practice with Advanced Heart Care in Decatur, Texas. His practice follows a non-traditional model where the main headquarters are based in Plano, Texas and all the practicing doctors focus on serving the rural and suburban areas. Jason is an advocate of this model of health care because it addresses the issues of many rural communities. “Before our practice was in place patients in rural areas would have to travel for miles in order to obtain cardiac care. We’ve grown the cardiac services and people don’t need to travel for top care.”

Dr. Finkelstein hasn’t forgotten the St. George’s community. “Grenada gave me an opportunity—not just the school, but the citizens. Living in the country and seeing how some of the people are disadvantaged in their healthcare, I just wanted to help.” He travels to Grenada every year to volunteer his services. During his regular one week visits he manages to see about 50 patients. Even as an alumnus, Jason believes St. George’s continues to offer its support; he explains “Unlike many other medical schools, St. George’s doesn’t forget you after you graduate. They’re still there for students with letters of recommendations or license applications.”

Jason spends his spare time traveling and spending time with his family. He and his wife of 10 years have two wonderful boys, ages three and five. He hopes to bring the entire family along his next visit to Grenada so they can experience the island for themselves.

Published June 2008

In her first rotation in her first year of residency at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSMC), Itala Manosha Wickremasinghe, MD SGU ’98, saw the course of her career unfold as soon as it had begun. Stationed at the Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Center, an affiliate of the US Department of Veterans Affairs in Dallas, Dr. Wickremasinghe felt an instant connection not only with the facility but the patient population: its veterans.

“I just fell in love with the patients, the environment, and the complexity of care,” Dr. Wickremasinghe said. “The veterans are such a special population that is so worthy of the best and highest levels of care. I knew this place was for me.”

She joined the SCI Center, one of only 24 VA spinal cord injury centers in the country, following her residency and has been there ever since, ascending to her current position of chief in 2010.

Dr. Wickremasinghe and her staff provide acute care, rehabilitative care, subspecialty care, as well as primary care for patients who range from young adulthood to elderly. For her efforts, Dr. Wickremasinghe has been named one of America’s Top Physicians in spinal cord injury medicine each of the last seven years. As an “unexpected highlight of [her] career,” she also earned the 2015 Advocacy/Excellence Award from the National Paralyzed Veterans of America, which is given to one physician nationwide per year for demonstrating outstanding leadership, professional achievement, and patient care and advocacy.

In addition, she recently spearheaded grant writing, design, development and implementation plans to build the third spinal cord injury long-term care center in the nation at UTMSC. The project, which is scheduled to be completed in 2020, will include a 30-bed long-term acute care center, an outpatient center, apartments, recreational areas, as well as a 1,000 car parking garage.

“My patients are my motivators and my inspiration,” Dr. Wickremasinghe said. “I have an amazing team that is so well aligned with our mission here. We need to provide the best quality health care that we can do our veterans, pushing the envelope and pushing boundaries while staying within policy and doing our job well. It’s a mission that I stand by, spread, and remind my staff of every day.”

She has spent more than a decade in Dallas, this after an upbringing for which she was always on the move. Although Dr. Wickremasinghe was born in Sri Lanka, she spent her formative years living in England, France, Spain, Belgium and Algeria—her father an engineer, her mother a ballet dancer. Dr. Wickremasinghe then completed high school in the United States and went on to earn bachelor’s degrees in biology and French at Houston Baptist University in 1994. She had been waitlisted at three US medical schools but was eager to embark on her journey to become a physician, so she enrolled at SGU in the fall. Having been exposed to numerous cultures in her upbringing, she welcomed the international nature of the SGU campus.

“There were so many different people from so many different places at SGU, and that was really enjoyable to me,” Dr. Wickremasinghe said. “Diversity is a beautiful thing. It teaches you to accept people for their life experiences and their differences. It makes you stronger.”

She spent two years in Grenada studying the basic sciences, mixing her studies with leisure time on the island. Dr. Wickremasinghe went on to complete her clinical rotations at New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. In 2001, Dr. Wickremasinghe began a physical medicine and rehabilitation residency at UTSMC and Veterans Affairs North Texas Health Care System.

Upon completing residency, she underwent a fellowship in spinal cord injury at Baylor College of Medicine’s Memorial Hermann-The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research (TIRR) in Houston. Fortunately, a position on staff at the SCI Center opened up. After immersing herself in patient care as well as the business aspect of the operation, Dr. Wickremasinghe went on to become clinical operations manager and medical director of its Home Care Program in 2007 before going on to become Chief in 2010. In addition, she is an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medical and Rehabilitation at UTMSC, and a reviewer for the Journal of Spinal Cord Injury Medicine.

Throughout her career, Dr. Wickremasinghe has crossed paths with dozens of St. George’s University students and graduates, for whom she has always been willing to vouch.

“SGU graduates shine wherever we are,” she said. “I have hired or helped in the hiring process for several SGU graduates because I know they are darn good physicians. They’re willing to work hard, to do what it takes, and never take anything for granted because nothing was handed to them.”

The son of a cardiologist, Huseng Vefali, MD SGU ’10, has long been familiar with the heart’s importance. Like the heart sits at core of a human’s health, treating patients’ cardiac issues has been at the core of Dr. Vefali’s motivation in medicine. He is currently an interventional cardiologist at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, teaching its fellows, residents, and medical students, including those from St. George’s University. “I started med school knowing that I was going into cardiology, and the more I learned about it, the more I fell in love with it,” he said.

As a child, Dr. Vefali visited his father at medical school and through his residency and fellowship. His father went on to become a partner with Cankaya Hospital in Ankara, as well as its director of cardiology, and Dr. Vefali saw an accurate depiction of the profession, good and bad, in and out of the hospital. “My dad would tell me stories about how a patient was gravely ill, and then he did this, this, and this, and now the patient was doing fine,” Dr. Vefali recalled. “I didn’t understand what he did, but in my eyes as a little kid, my dad was as amazing as any superhero I knew. But I also got to see the bad parts of being a cardiologist—the emergent calls in the middle of the night, or if a patient passed, I saw how both he and the family were affected on those unfortunate and rare occasions.”

Dr. Vefali earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from George Mason University in 2005 and then his Master of Health Services Administration from Strayer University. He attended SGU on an International Peace Scholarship and thrived in his new surroundings, both socially and academically. Dr. Vefali was a member of the Student Government Association and Clinical Research Society, and president of the Persian Student Association.

The University prepared Dr. Vefali to stand out as a clinical student at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, NY, as well as on the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) exams. He finished at or above the 97th percentile on all three USMLE steps the first time he took them. “SGU was really an ideal medical school setting,” he added. “It has all the conveniences of back home, but still it’s still laid back so you can concentrate on your studies. It could not have worked out any better.”

Dr. Vefali obtained an internal medicine residency at Seton Hall University St. Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, NJ, and then completed a cardiovascular disease fellowship at Temple University St. Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem, PA. He looks forward to returning to Turkey and join his father’s practice. “I believe in the importance of remembering your roots and giving back to the people who helped you forge your path in becoming who you are today,” Dr. Vefali said. “Pursuing knowledge at esteemed educational institutions and learning the most up-to-date medical and clinical knowhow is my duty, and I hope it will prepare me in my quest to give back to my people and my country.”

Published May 2013