The servant leader: Amanda McConnell, D.O.
Amanda McConnell’s path to medicine started at home and took her all over the world

By Anita Martin

While other kids played kickball and dodged water balloons, ten-year-old Amanda McConnell, D.O. ('08), mostly stayed inside, anchored at her grandfather’s bedside in her hometown of Proctorville, Oh.

“It started with numbness in his feet; within days it paralyzed him,” she says of her grandfather’s battle with the viral nerve condition Guillain-Barré. He made a full recovery after more than six months of intensive treatment and physical therapy. During that time, McConnell, who graduated in June from OU-COM, established herself as his personal nurse.

“I was always there, so the home nurses and physical therapists taught me his exercises, how to take his pulse, things like that,” McConnell says. “That was when I realized I wanted to be a doctor.”

In high school, McConnell volunteered summer nights at St. Mary’s Hospital in West Virginia—working the high-intensity 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. emergency room shifts. Later, as a biology student at Wright State University, she participated in OU-COM’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, conducting biomedical research and getting to know “the compassionate nature of OU-COM faculty.”

After enrolling at OU-COM, she assisted one such faculty member, Assistant Professor Gillian Ice, Ph.D., in international health research. Ice studies the stress response of Kenyan elders who raise children orphaned by the HIV/AIDS crisis. McConnell traveled to Kenya between her first and second years to help.

“I came back extremely energized after seeing the difference I could make,” McConnell says. The experience inspired her to earn a dual Master of Public Health degree and participate in two more OU-COM international programs: a geriatrics tutorial in Edinburgh, Scotland, and a clinical rotation in El Salvador.

More recently, McConnell completed a year-long family medicine fellowship at OU-COM, where she was named by her fellow classmates as 2008 Student D.O. of the Year. She’s completing her neurology residency at Grandview Hospital in Dayton.

“Neurology is complex; it’s a puzzle,” McConnell says. “At the same time, it will allow me to do formal teaching, research and clinical work—and still have a family.”

And that’s not all. McConnell and her husband, Benjamin Mack, a fourth-year medical student at Wright State University, also hope to eventually set up a permanent clinic in a developing country and sponsor opportunities for future medical students to experience international medicine.

McConnell sees herself as a lifelong learner and international medical advocate. “I would like to use what I know for the betterment of other people,” she says. “A doctor is a servant leader.”