Sometimes, the longest journeys wind up being the most rewarding. Born in Saudi Arabia, raised in Connecticut, and then moved to Las Vegas in middle school, Dr. Chelsea Prollamante is happy she has finally found her home. “I definitely wanted to stay in Las Vegas pretty early on in my life,” Prollamante says, “and I think staying on the West Coast was a big deal for me, so I’m actually really glad to stay here and continue my residency training.”

As a third-year resident in the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV Department of Pediatrics, Prollamante got her inspiration to go into medicine from her parents who were both nurses. “I saw how they were very hardworking, and they sacrificed a lot to get to where we were. So, I knew that I wanted to help people in that sort of way.”

Through medical school, she wanted to try a bit of everything and thought family medicine might be a good fit. Then, pediatrics was one of her last rotations. “Once I did my pediatrics rotation, I was like, ‘I love the kids. I love how resilient they are and how it doesn’t seem like work.’” So, the journey continued. Her first choice for a residency program after completing her undergraduate medical education at Touro University Nevada was the school of medicine and she got it. “I knew early on I wanted to stay in Las Vegas, so this was definitely my first choice.”

Prollamante finds adjusting to different rotations to be the most challenging aspect. “By the time I get used to kind of the flow of the day and understanding how to take care of those specific patients, I move on to the next rotation. So, it’s kind of like starting a new job every month over and over again. But, it’s exciting because you learn something new and you go into different subspecialties and you learn a little bit of how that attending likes to do things So, it’s challenging, but very, very rewarding.”

Prollamante also notes that the help from the office of graduate medical education (GME) has been invaluable to her as a resident. “Our faculty advisors who make sure that we’re meeting all our milestones... and making sure that we have our Q1 projects done and our scholarly activities. The one-on-one with advisors has been really good. I reached out to the school of medicine advisor for education, and it was actually Adeste [Adeste Sipin, MA, director of academic support services in the office of student affairs] who really helped me with getting a schedule for my boards. This time to have to study for boards, you have to do your clinical rotations, you have to actually work as a physician. I couldn’t find the time to work when I should study for boards and he actually set up a really detailed and very, very nice schedule for me. And I actually passed [the] boards with his help.”

Prollamante also finds the leadership of the faculty invaluable. “I think that the faculty and the program is really receptive to a lot of the changes that we’re trying to make. That’s one of the reasons why I joined in the first place. The residents’ voices are always being heard.”

As she plans to go into private practice in Henderson in July, Prollamante speaks frankly about the dire need for pediatricians in a state ranked near the bottom for pediatric care. A 2023 study from the American Board of Pediatrics showed that Nevada ranked 49th in the country for its pediatrician-to-child ratio. Where a ratio of one pediatrician for every 2,000 children is ideal, Nevada has one pediatrician for every 2,600 kids.

“Our resident clinic sees a lot of underserved patients and a lot of them utilize the clinics that we do with CCSD [Clark County School District]. I see that there’s a huge need for general pediatricians and subspecialists. Some of our patients that we see in the inpatient setting, we will have to transfer them off to Utah or Los Angeles, because we don’t have the subspecialties that they need in town. We also see those patients in rural populations like Bullhead, Arizona, or even Pahrump. There’s not a lot of places that deal with kids, especially with chronic conditions in those rural areas. So, there’s a huge need all across the board.”

Prollamante says, “That’s why I think it was a big deal for me to stay in town because I’m hoping to kind of help with that.”