Hometown: Iowa City, IA
Dr. Callaghan joined the faculty in 2021. She originally came to South Bend to attend the University of Notre Dame as an undergraduate. During that time, she grew to deeply love the city of South Bend and its people, and she remained in South Bend after graduation to complete a year of service, working closely with Young Life Michiana and the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker. In 2013, she moved to Nashville to attend Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. There she discerned family medicine as the best path forward for her in seeking to meet the needs of underserved patients. Dr. Callaghan completed her Family Medicine residency at Memorial in 2020. During her time as a resident, she participated in both the Care of the Underserved and Health Services Management curricula. After completing her residency, she became Memorial’s Health Services Management Fellow, receiving her Master of Public Affairs degree from Indiana University in 2021. As a faculty member, Dr. Callaghan oversees the Care of the Underserved curricular track and is a co-founder of Street Medicine South Bend, the residency’s street medicine outreach.
Alongside her work at the residency, Dr. Callaghan is an adjunct professor in the University of Notre Dame’s Hillebrand Center for Compassionate Care in Medicine. She helps teach two courses at Notre Dame, Compassionate Care and the Medical Professions and Spiritualties of Caring in the Helping Professions. In this work, she gets to explore with students the neuroscience of compassion and ways to pursue well-being as well as a balanced approach to care throughout one’s career as a helping professional. Dr. Callaghan is currently working with her colleague at Notre Dame to build a quarterly series for Memorial’s noon conferences, translating this work in Compassion Science to the context of residency training.
Why Memorial: Why Memorial: I initially came to Memorial because I was impressed by the opportunities the program’s full-spectrum, unopposed residency had to offer. I Iooked all over the country for the most rigorous Family Medicine training possible, and I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered I could have just that in South Bend. The acuity of patients, the procedural training, and the familial atmosphere among residents and faculty alike were some of the things that drew me to the program. While serving as chief resident and then the following year as a Health Services Management Fellow, I discovered a love of teaching and was delighted to have the opportunity to join the residency faculty at Memorial after my fellowship. I am extremely humbled and grateful to get to do such meaningful work – caring for some of the most vulnerable in South Bend and helping form the next generation of clinicians – alongside extraordinary residents, staff, and faculty colleagues who daily inspire me to grow both as a clinician and as a person.
Clinical interests: Care for underserved populations, street medicine, medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorders, trauma-informed care, compassion science, physician wellness, mentoring
Hobbies: Reading about and discussing how to live life fully alive, listening to live music (some of my favorite genres are bluegrass and Irish folk), running, hiking, backpacking, being an aunt/”auntie”/godmother
Favorite quotes: ‘Always remember you matter, you‘re important and you are loved, and you bring to this world things no one else can.’ –Charlie Mackesy in The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse
Favorite books:The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen, Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice by Dallas Willard and Jan Johnson, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, Thoughts to Make your Heart Sing by Sally Lloyd Jones, The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson, any of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books
Favorite place to go in South Bend: The St. Joseph River
