Elevated to Chief Resident

The demanding and challenging training programs at BWH provide residents access to unmatched expertise and vast resources. This summer, as BWH welcomed a new class of first-year residents, a team of new chief residents transitioned into their roles, including Cherie Parungo, MD.

September marks Parungo's third month as a newly appointed General Surgery Chief Resident. She began her General Surgery residency here in 1998. Next year, she is poised to begin a two-year fellowship in Thoracic Surgery.

Parungo sees her elevated leadership role as part of her unique educational experience at BWH. From her first kidney transplantation, to witnessing robotic laparoscopic cholecystectomies, to carefully following a patient through a lung transplantation, Parungo described all of her learning opportunities so far as “an honor.”

“These are the things during my residency that I called my mom about right away,” said Parungo.

Her mother, Farn, a PhD at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder researching how pollution affects weather patterns, is one of the main reasons Parungo became a physician. As a youngster, Parungo began planning on a career as a physician since the first trip she can remember to her pediatrician's office. But she became dismayed and discouraged when a boy in elementary school told her, “girls can't become doctors.”

“When I told my mother, she took me right to my pediatrician's office and he introduced me to all the women doctors in the office,” Parungo recalled.

As a student, she excelled in academics, golf and skiing in high school, earned several honors as an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley and received the medal for most outstanding graduate student at UCLA when she graduated medical school in 1998.

As a resident, Parungo has demonstrated dynamic leadership ability and refined surgical skills, said Stanley Ashley, MD, vice chair of surgery and director of the general surgery residency program. “Cherie has a quiet, unassuming confidence and grace that belie her accomplished leadership ability and expert surgical skills. She is the kind of person who makes me proud to participate in this program,” Ashley said.

Parungo praised the dynamics of the BWH residency programs. “Everyone here, from first-year residents to attendings and section chiefs, constantly pushes themselves and one another to be better,” she said.

“And there are so many resources here at BWH and the Longwood Medical Area. If you want to talk with the top person in a given field, you only have to walk down the Pike or across the street,” Parungo added.