Carola holds the distinction of being the school’s first graduate to join Quinnipiac’s Rural Family Medicine Residency program. The unique program draws family medicine resident physicians from across the country and the world to deliver comprehensive healthcare while addressing needs facing underserved Connecticut communities.

Kelly is a pediatric resident physician at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, the state’s only health system dedicated exclusively to pediatrics. Connecticut Children’s also serves as an official clinical and teaching hospital partner for Quinnipiac Netter students.

Kurkurina is an emergency medicine resident physician at Yale New Haven Hospital and a select member of the Yale Emergency Scholars (YES) program. A nationwide first, YES pairs a four-year residency with a fifth-year research fellowship.

Local Roots, Statewide Reach

“Having a residency like Quinnipiac Rural Family Medicine in the state is huge,” Carola said. “It’s really nice to be serving in Connecticut because there’s a large, diverse patient population, both urban and rural, and I think people underappreciate that.”

Helping to tackle some of the state’s regional healthcare inequities through direct patient care, Carola’s is currently serving as a first-year family medicine resident physician at St. Vincent’s Medical Center and its continuity clinic in Bridgeport, one of the state’s largest, most ethnically diverse cities. In his second and third residency years, Carola will transition to rural northwest Connecticut, delivering broad primary care across the socioeconomically varied communities of Torrington and Winsted at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital (Torrington) and Hartford HealthCare Health Center in Winsted.

Carola said the patients he’s seeing are profoundly grateful to have access to care.

“All the patients who come to see us and our preceptors are just excited to be there. It’s different from some of the other places where I’ve been, where patients are just going to a regular doctor’s office. The appointment seems to mean more to them,” Carola said.  

Carola grew up in an underserved rural town on the eastern side of the state, where reaching a primary care physician meant a 45-minute drive, and scheduling a routine checkup often required booking a year in advance. His interest in preventative care was also sparked by seeing so many of his neighbors avoid receiving regular care and waiting until minor ailments escalated into critical health problems.

“In low-income and blue-collar communities like the one I grew up in, there are a lot of people who are hearty individuals who work off the grid. They don’t see a doctor unless something’s really wrong. We have to bridge that gap,” said Carola.

Carola said there’s also a broader issue at play: a diminishing number of family medicine physicians in practices that can support these communities.

“During my family medicine rotation at Netter, I went back to an area close to where I grew up. It was a private practice where the physician had been seeing her patient population for 20 or 30 years; and many others were trying to get appointments because their doctors were retiring, and not as many people are going into family medicine. It’s just difficult to find an available family medicine physician who resonates with your background,” Carola said.

Carola said the growing need for family medicine can be also seen in the medical training landscape across Connecticut and the East Coast.

“It’s very easy to see the need for family medicine here, especially in areas of Connecticut. When you look for residency, there’s a lack of family medicine on the East Coast compared to some other areas such as the Midwest or the West Coast,” Carola said.

In Connecticut, Carola’s wife and Quinnipiac Netter classmate, Diana Sosa-Carola, MD ’26, is also helping to support Connecticut’s patient population. As part of this year’s graduate cohort, Sosa-Carola is a first-year family medicine resident physician at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown.

Seamless Continuity at Connecticut Children’s

When it came to listing her first choice for a medical residency match, Kelly said there was no question where she hoped to land: Connecticut Children's.

“Connecticut Children’s was my top choice for many reasons, but also because I’m from Connecticut and I wanted to serve the community,” said Kelly, who grew up in Shelton. “I love the residents that I had encountered while being a medical student, and to know that these are going to be my mentors as I go into residency was really wonderful for me.”

As a Quinnipiac Netter medical student, Kelly experienced pediatric clinical training, core rotations, and educational subspecialty at Connecticut Children’s, including completing a number of fourth-year elective rotations.  When her first year as a pediatric resident physician began in July, she was already equipped with knowledge of the hospital’s areas of service, standard of care, systems, and available resources. 

“When I had patients in my first block who may have had socioeconomic needs, I already knew who to contact to get them support that they needed, because I had seen it as a medical student. I felt like I had some extra time to focus on actually spending time with my patients or their families. It allowed me to go beyond just the medical care to whole-person care,” said Kelly.

It’s the type of care that resonates with Kelly’s Quinnipiac Netter medical education. The four-year academic and clinical journey focuses on treating the “whole person” by emphasizing holistic, patient-centered care, humanism, and early longitudinal clinical experiences that view patients within their broader community and personal contexts.

Kelly said her foundational and clinical training at Quinnipiac Netter was further strengthened by the supportive culture Quinnipiac Netter’s faculty created.

“In my experience, the physicians and clinical teachers at Netter are so open to teaching and so enthusiastic. They give us the confidence to say, ‘I don’t know, but I’m thinking.’ That can be something very intimidating, to admit that you’re still learning, especially coming into residency where you’re given more autonomy than you had in medical school. Not only did Netter give me the confidence to say that and know it would be well-received, but Connecticut Children’s also has an attitude that we are training, learning, and gaining this graduated autonomy.”

Kelly also finds working alongside current Quinnipiac Netter medical students on their clinical rotations at Connecticut Children’s to be particularly rewarding.

“I know exactly what they’re going through, and being able to talk with them or passing that knowledge along that I was given as a student is really rewarding.  It’s very cool being that bridge, and I look forward to other opportunities where I can continue being a bridge between Netter and Connecticut Children’s,” Kelly said.

Her Quinnipiac Netter education and exceptional medical student track record at the hospital did not go unnoticed by the residency staff at Connecticut Children’s – Kelly’s start as a pediatric medical resident physician began with one of the hospital’s harder rotations.

“The chiefs who scheduled me said they knew I could handle it. To know that the chiefs trusted me to take care of complex patients was quite a confidence boost,” said Kelly. “For me, it just solidifies that I want to stay in this area for the long term. Having these relationships, even recognizing patients that I had seen on my electives and fourth years, I already have a degree of continuity that’s just such a privilege. It’s a really cool relationship with a community that you usually would only start to experience later in your first year of residency. I’m fortunate enough to already being experiencing it.”  

Helping to strengthen Connecticut’s emergency care

As an emergency medicine resident physician at Yale New Haven Hospital, Kurkurina’s prior experience in the local community gave her an immediate advantage when caring for vulnerable populations.

“I think one of the things that jumps out now is knowing the resources for our patients and seeing a little bit of that continuity,” Kurkurina said. “In the emergency department, we do tend to see a lot of unhoused individuals. When I was a med student at Netter, I volunteered with the Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center in New Haven, which is also a continuity clinic for our patients that don’t have resources. Knowing that’s available for patient referrals or having an idea of what they’re talking about when they allude to Cornell Scott or one of their programs…being able to stratify that is really helpful.”

As a Quinnipiac Netter graduate, Kurkurina brings a strong awareness of Connecticut’s health systems that directly enhances her work as an emergency medicine resident.

“Through Netter, we rotate at a lot of different hospitals. Just being aware of where patients are coming from, where they’ve been seen already, and what resources are available at different hospitals, including why they’re being transferred to us, helps a lot,” she said.

Kurkurina said she greatly values the opportunity to join a Connecticut hospital system that’s recognized nationally for combining emergency and trauma services with academic medical expertise; while learning and working alongside many experts who have deep ties to the state.

“The faculty has been phenomenal as well as the senior residents that do a lot of hands-on teaching. We have a lot of staff that were born in Connecticut — it’s their home state and always will be. So, while we have this mix of clinicians who did come to Connecticut for training, we’re also being taught by people that have always lived here. That blending is phenomenal,” said Kurkurina.

Kurkurina's dedication to Connecticut's healthcare system extends beyond the emergency room and into her ongoing research. Kurkurina has published peer-reviewed research across key areas of emergency care, including paramedic workforce stability in Connecticut, EMS communication barriers, and emergency department utilization for older adults.

"Even my capstone project through my medical school looked at Connecticut-specific issues," said Kurkurina. "I looked at paramedic staffing in Connecticut, and that is also the basis for my ongoing research -- I’m very interested in pre-hospital EMS. I’m also interested in being able to continue the mentorship continuity — my Netter capstone was entirely Netter faculty and Connecticut Department of Public Health officials. Being able to do that kind of local research and then being able to stay in the state and continue to build my portfolio is really neat — still caring for the population, and expanding both clinically and research-wise.”