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Physician Assistant Studies

Carolina Wishner, MD, MPH

Carolina Wishner

 

Associate Professor,  Director of Didactic Curriculum & Student Success

Associate Dean for Inclusion & Opportunity, Director of Interprofessional Education

Education:

  • 2012 - Master of Public Health, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH; University of Toledo, Toledo, OH
  • 1990 - Doctor of Medicine (General Medicine), First Institute of Medicine "Nikolai Pirogov", Vinnytsia, Ukraine
  • 1982 - Bachelor of Science, Instituto Nacional de Panamá, Panama City, Panama

Interests:

Disaster Medicine, Public Health, Simulation, Procedural Skills, Interprofessional Education, Inclusion & Pipeline Programs

Bio:

Dr. Wishner joined the UTPA program as a full-time faculty member in 2014, bringing more than 30 years of experience in emergency medicine, public health, and military medicine. A native of Panama, she served as Medical Director of the National Police Medical Services and as a physician for the Panamanian Olympic Committee. Her disaster response experience includes Chernobyl in 1986, Ground Zero in 2001, and refugee relief on the Poland–Ukraine border in 2022. She also served as a Captain and Public Health Officer in the U.S. Air Force's Ohio Air National Guard.
 
At UToledo, Dr. Wishner teaches patient evaluation and hands-on procedural skills, from suturing to point-of-care ultrasound, and has taught in the Interprofessional Immersive Simulation Center since 2012. As Medical Director of Interprofessional Education, she brings together students from nine health professions to train as a team. She also directs pipeline programs that introduce young people to health care careers. Her scholarship focuses on simulation, disaster preparedness, and infectious disease education, and she received the PA Program's Outstanding Faculty Award. Trilingual in English, Spanish, and Russian.
 
Dr. Wishner believes the most important lessons in medicine come from real patients and real experiences, and she shares her experiences openly with every student she teaches. She takes great pride in mentoring her students, both professionally and personally, and her goal is simple: to give them everything she has learned so they are ready to care for their patients with skill, compassion, and humility.
 
Publications:
  • Fink BN, Wishner C. Physician Assistant familiarity and skill with the recovery position: A pilot study. Scholar: Pilot and Validation Studies. 2023 Jul;4(1):1–5. doi:10.32778/SPVS.71366.2023.33. https://scholar.kglmeridian.com/view/journals/spvs/4/1/article-p1.xml
  • Peeters, M. J., Hassan, K. S., Taylor, C. Y., & Wishner, C. (2022). Describing an asynchronous, online interprofessional education workshop for advanced practice providers [Abstract]. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 86(5), Article 9168. https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe9168
  • McKenzie, N., Wishner, C., Sexton, M., Saevig, D., Fink, B., & Rega, P. (2020). Active shooter: What would health care students do while caring for their patients? Run? Hide? Or fight? Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 14(2), 173–177. https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2019.67
  • Wishner, C., Taylor, C., Leigh, L., Williams, M., Bell, M. A., & Luebke, S. (2020). Physician assistant students' knowledge of Zika virus: A pilot study. Infectious Diseases: Research and Treatment, 13, Article 1178633720909158. https://doi.org/10.1177/1178633720909158
  • Wishner, C., Taylor, C., Williams, M., & Kuneman, D. (2020). The role of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in the treatment of sickle cell disease. International Journal of Medical Science and Clinical Invention, 7(9), 5024–5032. https://doi.org/10.18535/ijmsci/v7i09.014
  • Fink, B. N., Rega, P. P., Sexton, M. E., & Wishner, C. (2018). START versus SALT triage: Which is preferred by the 21st century health care student? Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 33(4), 381–386. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049023X18000547
  • Wishner, C. (2017). Professionalism. In G. Kayingo & V. M. Hass (Eds.), The health professions educator: A practical guide for new and established faculty (pp. 199–205). Springer Publishing Company.
  • Wishner, C. (2017). Simulation in clinical education. In G. Kayingo & V. M. Hass (Eds.), The health professions educator: A practical guide for new and established faculty (pp. 131–137). Springer Publishing Company.

 

 

Last Updated: 10/2/26