Dr. Cristina Padilla: Eliot Goldings Award in Rheumatology

By Deborah Wormser

Dr. Cristina Padilla
Dr. Cristina Padilla

From the time she was young, Dr. Cristina Padilla knew she wanted a career in medicine and pursued her goal with determination.

Growing up in League City, Texas, the Baylor University graduate remembers at age 6 or 7 asking her mother to describe her career as a medical surgical nurse. Her mother, who recently retired from UT Medical Branch at Galveston, explained that she took care of patients.

“I wanted to take care of patients, too,” Dr. Padilla remembered. “But when she described what it was like to be a doctor, I liked that description better, and ever since then I just had it in my mind that I would pursue a career in medicine as a doctor.”

Dr. Padilla is recipient of the 2016 Eliot Goldings Award in Rheumatology, which recognizes the most outstanding medical student in rheumatology. The award honors Dr. Eliot A. Goldings, a faculty member in the Division of Rheumatic Diseases who died in 1988 at age 40. Dr. Goldings joined the Division in 1978 and distinguished himself as a scholar, teacher, and clinician.

“We are very excited that Cristina is the recipient of this award, she is very dedicated, smart and has shown a real interest in pursuing a career in rheumatology. Since she was an undergraduate student, she has been involved in research on scleroderma,” said Dr. Guillermo “Andres” Quiceno, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine. “I also think her personality fits very well with this specialty because patients with chronic diseases need a physician that has a lot of compassion, and she has this quality and many more.”

Dr. Padilla said, “I am honored to be selected for the Goldings Award and I am grateful to my mentors, Dr. Quiceno and Dr. Elizabeth Solow, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, to the many wonderful friends I made in Medical School, and to the patients who I had the opportunity to care for on my rotations. They’ve all inspired me to be the best person I can be and to strive to be the best in whatever I choose to do with my life.”

Always inquisitive, Dr. Padilla made an unusual request for a Christmas gift when she was 10. “I asked my mother if she could get me cancer cells from work so I could do experiments on them,” she said, laughing. “Instead, she gave me a small science lab kit that came with a little microscope and petri dishes.”

The Clear Creek High School graduate attended Baylor, where she was a premed forensic science major with minors in chemistry and biology. She then traveled to Boston University to earn a master’s degree in biomedical forensic sciences, still with the goal of attending medical school.

“While I was there I applied for a part-time position as a research assistant in the rheumatology section at Boston University Medical Center,” she said. She got to know patients in the rheumatology clinic where she helped enroll them into clinical trials.

“I really enjoyed working with them. I thought they were very interesting people with very curious presentations of their rheumatic illnesses, which included scleroderma and lupus,” she said.

She was drawn to UT Southwestern Medical School from the moment she arrived to interview. “I felt it was a very strong institution for research as well as patient care,” she said.

The next chapter of her life will be at the University of Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital in New York, where she has matched in internal medicine.