Candidates
Vice Chair – (Term: 1 year), Chair – (Term: 1 year), Immediate Past Chair – (Term: 1 year)
(three-year term, 2024-2027)
Steven Hannigan, MD
Associate Residency Program Director
Carolinas Medical Center
Steven Hannigan, MD is honored to be considered for the APPD Southeast Region Vice Chair position. Doctor Hannigan is a clinical assistant professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine Charlotte and Atrium Health Levine Children’s Hospital. He completed his undergraduate and medical school degrees as a member of the Siena College and Albany Medical College Science and Humanities Program. He completed his residency at Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center Pediatrics in Charlotte NC, served as chief resident, and became an Associate Program Director at the conclusion of his chief year in 2018.
Clinically, Doctor Hannigan enjoys the breadth of hospital medicine. He spent the first five years of his career covering subspecialty services as a hospitalist and now splits his time between the special care nursery of a community hospital and the inpatient floors and nursery of Atrium Health Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte. He is passionate about high value care; residents have described him as anti-Benadryl and pro-discharge.
Doctor Hannigan’s primary focus as Associate Program Director has been resident recruitment. He helped guide the program through its transition to digital applicant evaluation, virtual interviewing and the Thalamus platform. He overhauled their holistic review process incorporating principles learned through the Atrium Health Diversity Certificate program and best practices from the APPD. Doctor Hannigan is a longtime member of the Program Evaluation Committee, Clinical Competency Committee, Hospital Medicine Hiring Committee, and Hospital Medicine Billing and Coding Committee.
Doctor Hannigan has been an active member of the APPD since 2017. He completed the APPD Leadership in Educational Academic Development (LEAD) course in the spring of 2023 as a member of Cohort 10 and regularly attends the spring conference. He looks forward to serving the Southeast APPD Region.
Dr. Hannigan’s goals are to address pediatric workforce challenges by increasing medical school engagement and legislative advocacy at the statewide level and in concert with the APPD’s national efforts. Dr. Hannigan feels there is opportunity for regional collaboration on remediation/improvement plan models and ways to engage the next generation of pediatric trainees.
Stephen Pishko, MD
Program Director PHM Fellowship, Associate Residency Program Director
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Hello! My name is Stephen Pishko, and I am honored to be considered for the position for vice chair of our APPD Southeast Region! Currently, I am the Program Director of our Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellowship (2019) and an Associate Program Director for our Pediatric Residency Program (2022) at the University of TN Health Science Center / Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, TN. I have been a member of the APPD since 2015 starting as an Assistant Program Director, and I have thoroughly enjoyed having the APPD as my “academic home.”
I grew up in Plano, TX and received my B.S from the University of Notre Dame (2001). I received my medical degree at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, TX in 2005 and completed my residency training at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center / Le Bonheur in 2008. Since then, I have been a pediatric hospitalist for the past 15 years at my home institution and have enjoyed my personal and professional growth as a clinician educator, especially through attendance at APPD and learning from my mentors and peer relationships developed over the years.
At my institution, I have a passion for our faculty development and our Board Review and the Residents as Teachers program for our residency. I have also grown in navigating the administrative side of graduate medical education during the development of our pediatric hospital medicine fellowship in 2019. The lessons learned during my time as an assistant program director and through the APPD really helped me prepare for those tasks.
I truly have appreciated the community provided by the APPD, especially the Southeast Region. My goals and hope for this role is to continue our strong collaboration and support for programs in our region. I hope that we continue to share and discuss best practices especially while adapting to changes to our curriculum and to the complex landscape of recruitment of trainees to pediatrics. I really appreciate being a member of the APPD Southeast Region, and I would appreciate the opportunity to serve in any way that I can.
Ashley Siems, MD
Fellowship Program Director
Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital
My personal career goal is to be an innovative educator and educational scholar in graduate medical education with a focus on training comprehensive physicians who are not only knowledgeable and competent providers but have developed their non-technical skills including communication, leadership, and professionalism. I have dedicated my academic endeavors in developing expertise in team dynamics having published on inter-disciplinary hand offs between surgeons and intensivists, created and studied training using crisis resource management strategies to improve team performance in rapid response teams, and studying quality metrics during resuscitation events during in hospital pediatric cardiac events. I completed my Master’s in Education at George Washington University to broaden my expertise and deepen my understanding of adult learning theory, completed training to be an expert in medical simulation, and written curricula for medical trainees to develop both pathophysiologic understanding of critical care medicine (my specialty) and non-technical skills. I started my career at Children’s National Hospital where I served as PCCM fellowship associate program director, director of education for the simulation program, and director of education for the pediatric critical care division. In the latter role, I oversaw the education of nurses, residents, fellows, and faculty within critical care. In 2020, I moved to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, I have undertaken building a new fellowship program in order to develop each individual fellow’s strength and am a proud member of APPD. I am passionate about pediatric resident and fellow education. My goals for the position on the Southeast board would be to increase the connectivity amongst programs in the region, work on advocacy specifically in our geographic region and work on recruiting more medical students to a career in pediatrics.
