Faculty and Fellows

Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellowship

The Fellowship Program is directed by highly experienced specialists who are board certified in Pediatric Hospital Medicine. Our faculty provides hands-on instruction to help fellows gain comprehensive clinical knowledge.

Program Director

Jacqueline M. Walker, MD, MHPE, FAAP
Pediatric Hospitalist; Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine

Associate Program Director

Michael G. Platt, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine

Program Coordinator

Toni Zaner, BA

Program Liaison

Leesa Brown

Fellows

Emily Bonanni, MD
I’m Emily, one of the first year PHM fellows at CMH. I am originally from Columbia, MO and went to medical school at University of Missouri – Kansas City. I completed my pediatrics residency here at Children’s Mercy and always felt at home and welcomed by the hospital medicine division. The clinical experiences provided by the hospital in combination with the wide variety of interests within the PHM division and excitement to include and mentor me in each of my interests ultimately led to my decision to remain at CMH to continue my training. Throughout fellowship, I hope to continue to work on my clinical skills while taking advantage of the mentorship to narrow my scholarly interests and further develop the academic side of my career. While I am most interested in patient quality and safety, I am excited to be part of a variety of projects within the division to best prepare me for my future career in academic hospital medicine.

Jonathan Hartley, DO
I am currently a 1^st year PHM fellow at Children’s Mercy Hospital. I am originally from Des Moines, Iowa. I did my undergraduate school at Loras College where I majored in Economics. I returned to Des Moines to get my DO degree at Des Moines University. I completed my pediatrics residency at the University of Missouri, and now I am very excited to do my PHM fellowship at CMH! On my interview day, I was really blown away by the atmosphere of the PHM division; it felt like the division was one big family. I was also impressed with the variety of projects the faculty were working on. My academic interests include hospital efficiency/costs, quality metrics, and bronchiolitis. I am also pursuing a Masters of Business Administration while in fellowship. The program has been incredibly supportive in helping to balance fellowship and a master’s program. Outside of work, I enjoy both playing and watching soccer and basketball. I also am a big fan of tabletop games and playing DnD. My short time at Children’s Mercy has been amazing, and it is been great to see how excited and supportive all of the division’s faculty have been to help me reach my goals.

Kristyn Jeffries, MD
I am currently a 2^nd year PHM Fellow at Children’s Mercy in Kansas City. I grew up in a small town in southern Indiana and I am a proud alum of the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University School of Medicine. After completing my pediatrics residency training at Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham, Alabama, I was excited to return to the Midwest to begin my fellowship at Children’s Mercy. During my interview, I was extremely impressed with the wide breadth of academic interests and enthusiasm within the hospital medicine division at CMH as well as the fellowship’s emphasis on preparing trainees for a successful career in academic hospital medicine. My first year of fellowship exceeded these expectations both clinically and with my research as I received several national conference acceptances for my scholarly work in unintentional injury hospitalizations. I have found excellent mentorship within the division which has enabled me to continue building skills in advocacy and health policy. Additionally, I am obtaining my Masters in Public Health concurrently. While not at the hospital, my fiancé Kent and I enjoy walking and riding bikes at the numerous beautiful local parks in the KC area.

Claire Seguin, MD
I am a second year fellow in PHM at Children’s Mercy Hospital. I am originally from Columbus, OH. Following undergrad and graduate work on the East Coast at Providence and BU, I moved westward to Cincinnati for medical school. I completed pediatrics residency here at CMH. I have benefited from the incredible teaching and mentorship of the CMH hospitalist group during residency here and stayed for fellowship because of the strong support for my academic interests including quality improvement and advocacy. I am in the Pediatric Bioethics Certificate program this year and serve on the hospital Bioethics Committee. I am interested in Implementation Science, the study of interventions, policies, and other methods to improve the uptake of evidence-based practices to improve effectiveness and quality of health care. I am working with the Asthma Continuum group at CMH to improve Asthma care in all settings of our organization and in Kansas City. My second project seeks to identify patient factors associated with poor recognition of clinical deterioration with the goal of identifying areas of improvement for these systems. Finally, I am working on a quality improvement project for timely, complete HSV testing in neonates. I want to affect larger improvements on a systems, community, and national level. The PHM program at CMH allows me the flexibility to pursue this interest in larger settings.

David Synhorst, MD
I am the current 3rd year PHM fellow here at CMH. I am originally from Nebraska and went to medical school at UNMC in Omaha. I did my pediatrics residency training in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital. I loved Michigan, but, while interviewing for PHM fellowship, I fell in love with CMH. The supportive faculty, the robust research and QI opportunities, and the chance to hone my clinical skills at one of the best children's hospitals in the country were huge for me. Not only does Mercy provide a fantastic PHM fellow experience, the hospital is also helping me to get a Master’s in Public Administration with an emphasis in Hospital Administration. My research here has been focused on appropriate utilization of resources, and the fantastic mentorship I have found here has led to platforms at national conferences and publications in major journals such as Pediatrics. When I am not working, I am spending time with my amazing wife Abby and our three kids, Joey (5) and Daniel (3) and Jack (1 month). We frequent the KC Zoo and local parks and love to try out new restaurants. KC is a beautiful city with so much to offer!