Young alumna’s dreams of a medical career coming alive

It’s 8 p.m. on a Tuesday, and Ashley Peterson ’14 is just leaving an Atlanta hospital. But her job is not done because she talks with a patient during her drive home. She’s made a habit of giving her number to her patients.

Peterson, 25, is an osteopathic physician and family medicine resident physician at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. Her medical career is on the fast track — just as everything in her life has been.

She started kindergarten at 4, skipped the fourth grade, graduated Hickory Ridge High School in Harrisburg at 15, graduated from UNC Charlotte at 19, and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM) at age 24. She is the youngest black Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO) graduate from PCOM’s Georgia campus, and she is the fourth youngest overall DO graduate from PCOM Georgia.

Her dream is to use her medical degrees to open businesses that promote preventive health care, especially among people living in underserved communities.

“I want to become the Oprah of health and wellness and medicine,” Peterson said.

Those are big dreams. But Peterson has a big personality, and she has always been motivated. For that, she thanks her mother, a teacher and counselor who holds three degrees and multiple certifications. Peterson’s father spent 23 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, so the family moved often when she was a child. Peterson said her mother continuously sought more education so she’d be able to get a job wherever they moved.

She challenged her daughter in the same way, even giving Peterson — already enrolled in gifted courses — school work to do during the summer.

“She would just challenge me at home to do more, more, more,” Peterson recalled.

She initially planned to attend college in Georgia, but fell in love with the Charlotte area while attending high school here. She also didn’t want to venture too far from home since she was starting college so young.

At UNC Charlotte, she majored in anthropology and minored in sociology. Peterson counts Associate Professor Daniel Jones in the Department of Chemistry; Sharon Bullock, a senior lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences; and retired sociology professor Dennis Stevens among her mentors at the University.

Peterson, who initially planned to major in chemistry, said Jones always offered her encouragement. Bullock and Stevens backed her in her decision to change her major to anthropology. She had a particularly special relationship with Stevens.

“He always supported me in my dreams,” she said. “He wrote all my letters of recommendation for different things.”

She also appreciated the diversity of the campus. “I would definitely choose UNC Charlotte again,” Peterson said.

Peterson chose to attend osteopathic medical school because she felt osteopathic medicine, with its holistic approach to caring for patients, would help her become a better primary care physician.

Osteopathic medical colleges are graduating more students every year, according to the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, with more than 6,500 new osteopathic physicians entering the workforce annually.

But everything hasn’t come easy for Peterson. She failed anatomy her first year of osteopathic medical school, calling it “the first big failure of my life.”

Peterson said, “I kind of had to sit and think about what was important to me, how to prioritize and time management.”

She sat out of school a year, and returned the following year to retake the course, which she passed. She graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in May 2019 and started her residency at Morehouse in July 2019. She’s on track to graduate in 2022.

At Morehouse, she’s in her element, using what she learned in the classroom to work hands-on with patients in her various clinical rotations: neurology, surgery, emergency medicine.

“What I am good at is taking information and making it effective, making it work in real time,” Peterson said.

She sees patients at Grady Memorial Hospital, the Atlanta VA Medical Center and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Peterson said she’s being trained in innovative techniques such as telemedicine.

Peterson boasts about her bedside manner and applies principles taught by her parents — “treat people how you want to be treated”— and those learned in osteopathic medical school — “there’s nothing like the power of touch” — in her work with patients.

“I try to be real with patients,” Peterson said. “That’s something I’m really big about.”

Photo courtesy of Ashley Peterson (Ashley Nicole Photography).