Interview with Duane Siberski, DO '92
Where are you currently working?
I work at Penn State Health St. Joseph's Medical Center Reading, PA as an emergency physician. It is a community based hospital that I have been at for about three years. It is also a site that the students from here rotate around and I get to show them where they can possibly end up. Previously, I was at Reading Hospital for 20 years; they're a level one trauma center.
What brought you to UNE COM?
I was going to be a dentist (my initials are DDS). My dad was a dentist, and he practiced dentistry until he was 85. But I had a lab partner who was a paramedic, and I got the EMS bug. I enrolled in our county community college, and became an EMT/paramedic, and said, yeah, this is fun, but then I said I want to do medicine. I had some excellent mentors. One, Robert Sing, DO, who was a Des Moines graduate and Vic Scali, DO was a PCOM graduate. I worked for both of them. They were emergency physicians I met being an EMT. I grew up outside of Philadelphia (plenty of places to go to school down there), but you know, cheese steak? Lobster? Do the math. I was actually accepted here before I had my PCOM interview. So I kind of knew where I wanted to come. Now I get to come back and just watch this place grow.
What is one of your favorite memories from here?
Oh, you mean the blur? You know, it actually involves Dean Kelley. We had a little bet that at graduation I wouldn't wear snakeskin cowboy boots with my tuxedo. I went as a student representative to a conference in Las Vegas, found boots on sale, and wore my snakeskin cowboy boots when I graduated. There is a picture at City Hall, but you can’t really tell under the robes.
"It’s really been a matter of showing an interest in them, and if I do that, down the road, they'll do the same for someone else."
Above: Dr. Siberski treating soldier with OMT during manhunt; Below: Steven Ferro, COM '21 attends one of the trainings with Dr. Siberski