Fourth Year Mastery Program | |
Angela Fryer, M.D., was born and raised in the quaint little town of Red Wing, Minnesota. She was lucky to be raised by two sets of parents; her two moms were nurses and her dad was the hospital laboratory guru. Angela has early memories of her father walking the two short blocks home from the hospital in the winter with Petri dishes under his arms to keep them warm so he could swab the kid’s throats for strep. He was also the one who drew her blood at 3 a.m. in the Emergency Room when she had a fever of 105, much to her utter dismay and protesting. Having survived this unforgettable ordeal, she went on to spend many hours discovering the wonders of the pathology lab that were next door to her father’s office. Her family planted an early and indestructible seed of medicine which would flourish from that point on with a few detours along the way. Being the youngest of 5 children, in very typical youngest child behavior Angela decided that she needed to go to college as far away from Minnesota as possible. There was a small all female liberal arts college in the state of Virginia (to which she had never been) that offered her an academic scholarship and wanted her to play basketball to boot. Randolph-Macon Woman’s College was her home for four wonderful years, at the end of which she was finally able to say y’all without grimacing. Having decided that she was not yet ready for medical school, she applied to the Peace Corps which would carry her ever further away from Minnesota. She completed her undergraduate degree in chemistry, from which she still has a very sour taste for physical chemistry, and then made a leap and accepted an invitation with the Peace Corps to be a volunteer in Cameroon. She had an idyllic Peace Corps experience, living in a small village in the mountains of northwest Cameroon for three years where she taught secondary school chemistry and biology in addition to working in the prenatal clinic and labor and delivery ward. Angela was successful in bringing foreign aid to her village by procuring funding for two projects. The first was a project to provide ceilings for classrooms at the school where she taught and the second was a much larger project to upgrade the local heath center. She planned and supervised both the building of a new hospital wing and bringing running water into the health center. She is a also a strong advocate of women’s education and worked with the Cameroonian Women in Development, planning and supervised fundraising and disbursement of math and science scholarships for secondary school girls and small business loans to women for rural income generating projects. However, she would say the biggest perk of working for the Peace Corps was meeting her husband Diego, a fellow volunteer. After returning from the Peace Corps and then working at the National Science Foundation for two years, Angela decided it was time to return home to Minnesota and start medical school. Angela spent her third year of medical school participating in the Rural Physician Associate Program (RPAP) in her hometown of Red Wing. It was there that she solidified her interest in Family Medicine. Medicine and obstetrics both appealed to her greatly and she felt that only in Family Medicine would she be able to pursue all of her interests. Angela, who lives with her husband in St. Paul, is excited to be within walking distance of the community she will be serving. She hopes her practice will include a wide range of family medicine with a focus on maternal/child health and that someday she will be able to travel back to Cameroon or Uganda where her husband does his economics research and dedicate a portion of her career to international medicine. |
Angela Fryer, MD |
Kinsey Nelson, M.D., was born and raised in the urban oasis on the prairie of Fargo, North Dakota as the younger of 2 children. Whether accurate or not, he likes to describe himself as having a normal childhood. Thanks to his mother’s work as a pharmacist and his father’s work in refugee resettlement, he grew up assuming all kids hung out in pharmacies for a few hours on Saturdays and would make the occasional trip to the airport at 11 pm on a Tuesday to greet newly arriving refugees. It wasn’t until later in life that he grew to appreciate the more unique aspects of his upbringing. With his early exposure to the medical field, it didn’t take long before Kinsey developed an interest in medicine. But he attributes his ultimate decision to pursue a medical career to the interaction between both of his parents’ lines of work, as many of the refugees he had met through his father’s work received their medical care at his mother’s clinic. While growing up, Kinsey spent much of his time participating in athletics, his sports of choice being baseball, basketball and track. He also spent a great deal of time on music, as he started playing the cello at the age of 10. He could easily be spotted in junior high as the kid hauling his cello with him to basketball practice or onto the bus after school, something he didn’t particularly appreciate as a 13 year-old. In spite of such traumatizing events, he persevered and continued to be active in both music and athletics through high school. Wherever life may take him, Kinsey will always be a proud Fargoan at heart. In spite of his fondness for the city of his youth, he decided to venture eastward for college, making it all the way to St. Peter, MN to attend Gustavus Adolphus College. Here he earned a degree in biology while becoming increasingly involved in music. After college it was time for another big move—a whole 70 miles northeast to attend medical school at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He continued to be involved in music, playing in a university orchestra during the first two years of medical school. While Kinsey enjoyed many different rotations during his clinical years, he never felt more at home than when he was doing family medicine. The relationships with patients, breadth of material, focus on prevention and dedication to the underserved all made family medicine the perfect fit for Kinsey. He hopes to eventually have a practice covering the full range of family medicine with a focus on working with the medically underserved. Kinsey enjoys spending his free time in any number of ways. He continues to play his cello (even if he might not sound as good as he used to). When not hampered by injuries, he could be described as an avid runner—he enjoys running half-marathons (but enjoys finishing them more) and one of these years will get up the motivation to run a full one. He also enjoys reading various types of books, though he definitely has his favorites (huge Harry Potter nerd!). And if all else fails, he’s always happy to just sit back and watch some Seinfeld reruns or a few episodes of Scrubs or challenge his brother-in-law to a game of hockey on Xbox (it usually doesn’t end well for Kinsey). He enjoys spending time with his family as well as the special lady in his life—a mischievous orange kitty named Mabel who is too smart for her own good. Kinsey is excited to join the United Family Medicine Residency Program. He looks forward to being part of a program with faculty and residents that are dedicated to the highest level of teaching while being integral partners within the community. |
Kinsey Nelson, MD |