My interests have continued to diversify as I've done different things with my career. At Tufts [Cummings School], there are so many strong avenues within the hospitals for students to investigate all different aspects of vet med—public health, the wildlife clinic, zoological medicine, small and large animals. That's my favorite thing about the field: there's so much diversity in what you can do.
Welcome Dr. Emma Gorenberg
New assistant professor of anesthesia and analgesia is also boarded in large animal medicine—and a poet
Dr. Emma Gorenberg (she/her) has led a broad and fascinating career across academia, government, and industry. Her first position in academia was an internship at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. Two residencies and two fellowships later, she has returned to join the faculty as an assistant professor of anesthesia and analgesia in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, treating patients at both Hospital for Large Animals (HLA) and Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals (FHSA).
Gorenberg rode horses growing up in southeastern Massachusetts. The ambulatory equine veterinarians she met at the stables imbued her passion for veterinary medicine.
“When I was a kid, I thought the vet was the coolest person in the world. I always wanted to go to vet school—it was always my ultimate goal,” she says of the start of her nontraditional career path.
Science and the humanities both took center stage in her studies. Gorenberg majored in English and political science at Amherst College, while also completing pre-medical courses. She went on to earn her MFA in creative writing at the University of Michigan on a teaching fellowship. She complemented her writing classes with pre-veterinary courses and taught undergraduate English classes.
Up next was the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. In her first year, she was awarded the Csaba Vedlik scholarship at Penn, which enabled her to shadow clinical rotations in the large animal hospital during the summers after her first and second years. “I'm so grateful for that scholarship because it introduced me to specialty medicine and large animal critical care in a way that allowed me to focus quite early on what I wanted to do, and my path really diverged. I went into school thinking I wanted to do equine ambulatory sports medicine, and that's far from where I ended up.”
For her clinical fourth year, Gorenberg tracked heavily with large animals and appreciated the high caseload and working closely with the large animal Internal Medicine and Cardiology services at Penn. She participated in her first research study on atrial fibrillation recurrence in horses.
Gorenberg interned at Cummings School in both large animal internal medicine and field service, working at HLA and Massachusetts Equine Clinic in Uxbridge.
“It was the perfect internship for me,” she says. “At the time, I was still torn between being an ambulatory vet and a medicine specialist. It gave me exposure to both. I loved being an intern on the medicine service here. Our standard of care is so high, and it influenced my love of critical care. The experience of managing those complicated cases made the choice quite clear to me.”
A neonatal cria was one critical case she managed with Dr. Daniela Bedenice over many weeks. “I remember the dedication to the specificity of care that these kinds of cases need. It was also wonderful to work in a hospital that saw a strong breadth of large animal species.”
After her internship, Gorenberg began her first of two residencies, in large animal internal medicine at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. Similar to HLA, she had the opportunity to treat a range of large animal species. She also conducted research on large animal endocrine disease and infectious disease diagnostics.
“You can't come out of Tufts [Cummings School] without loving camelids, and you can't come out of Cornell without loving treating pet pigs,” she says. “My biggest passion while I was there was caring for complex critical patients.”
After residency, Gorenberg was awarded a Science & Technology Policy Fellowship by the American Association for the Advancement of Science with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Division of International Conservation. She worked in Washington, DC, facilitating international grants to conserve wildlife and protected areas, support community-based conservation, and prevent infectious disease spread. She contributed to the global eradication plan for peste des petits ruminants, a virus that threatens domestic small ruminants and endangered wildlife.
“It was an incredible time to be able to use my degree and my writing skills to do that work,” she says. “One of the gifts of veterinary medicine is that you can foster these quite diverse interests and pursue lots of different things.”
After her time in DC, Gorenberg yearned to return to cardiovascular medicine. Selected for another fellowship in cardiovascular research at QTest Labs in Ohio, Gorenberg served as the attending veterinarian for preclinical trials of drugs and medical devices to treat cardiovascular disease in animals and humans. She considered specializing in cardiology, but ultimately landed on anesthesiology.
“I realized that anesthesiology allowed me to think about all the components of medicine that were interesting to me—cardiovascular physiology, critical care, the focus on many different species, pain management. I can combine a lot of my interests into one specialty,” she says.
On returning to Penn for her second residency in anesthesiology and pain management, Gorenberg treated small and large animal patients, enjoying the variety of cases and fast pace.
“It's one of the reasons I'm also grateful to be here. We similarly have a quite diverse caseload, and I'm grateful to still be at a busy hospital. It allows us to keep seeing the patients that challenge us to practice better medicine,” she says.
During residency, Gorenberg continued cardiovascular drug research with large animal patients, studying blood pressure support medications for animals under sedation. “We need more evidence as to how these medications work in horses and how they might work differently in a healthy patient versus a sick patient. Understanding that is one of my goals as a clinician,” she says.
Appointed to Cummings School faculty last December, Gorenberg is on the clinic floor treating large and small animals and training students, interns, and residents. She will continue researching cardiovascularly active drugs and critical care for small and large animals. She is excited to be back—the combination of the hospital culture, treating large and small animal patients, and working again with former mentors in an academic environment were all huge draws.
“It's a dynamic place to work and helps me continue to question the way I practice medicine, learn from my colleagues, and stay at the forefront of active research,” she says.
Gorenberg reflects on her time as a veterinary student, when she initially found anesthesia intimidating, “I see a lot of students who feel similarly. That comes from a good place—it’s a lot of responsibility. One of my goals is to demystify it and make it something they’re comfortable with. Most of our students are going to be involved with sedating animals and anesthesia in some way, so allowing them to feel more confident is really important.”
Gorenberg still writes poetry and nonfiction and meets monthly with a collective of writing friends from her MFA program.
“My interests have continued to diversify as I've done different things with my career,” says Gorenberg. “At Tufts [Cummings School], there are so many strong avenues within the hospitals for students to investigate all different aspects of vet med—public health, the wildlife clinic, zoological medicine, small and large animals. That's my favorite thing about the field: there's so much diversity in what you can do.”
Department:
Dept. of Large Animal Clinical Sciences