Spotlight

Dr. Carol Lynn Berseth has enjoyed a multifaceted career. She has an active interest in issues related to eating difficulties in the preterm infant and has been actively involved in educating medical students and residents on ethical issues in the newborn intensive care unit (NICU).

Dr. Berseth attended medical school at the University of Pittsburgh and she developed a love for neonates during a student elective in the NICU at Magee Women’s Hospital. She completed her pediatric residency training at Baylor College of Medicine when Dr. Arnold Rudolph was establishing the core nurseries at Texas Children’s Hospital.

During her residency training, she became intrigued by gastrointestinal physiology. Her subspecialty training was at Stanford University with Dr. Philip Sunshine. Dr. Berseth completed her training including several projects in the Department of Physiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

As a faculty member at Mayo Clinic and Foundation, she began a long, fruitful collaboration with several investigators in the internationally acclaimed Gastroenterology Research Unit. There Dr. Berseth began her pioneering clinical studies focusing on the motor function of the preterm neonatal gastrointestinal tract.

Ten years later, Dr. Berseth sold her snowblower and returned to Houston where she continues to focus on the feeding problems of preterm infants.

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Berseth has been a devoted teacher. At Mayo Clinic she coordinated the medical ethics course for first-year medical students and the Human Values Seminar Series for second and third-year medical students, and she served as a research mentor for pediatric gastroenterology fellows and pediatric residents. At Baylor, she assists with the medical ethics course for first-year medical students and has been a research mentor for medical students, neonatal fellows, and pediatric gastroenterology fellows.