Dr. Ryan grew up in Arvada and has lived in Colorado her entire life. She attended Colorado State University where she graduated with honors with a degree in Human Development and Family Studies, with a concentration in Gerontology. She later attended the University of Colorado School of Medicine and completed her internship and residency in Family Medicine at St. Joseph Hospital in Denver. After practicing Family Medicine in Lakewood, she was accepted into a fellowship in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Her experience was divided between serving as a physician in an inner-city hospice inpatient unit and, at the Clinical Center, helping clinical trial patients tolerate their treatments through advanced symptoms management and providing Palliative support to the patients and their families. At the NIH she had the opportunity to work with some of the nation’s foremost cancer researchers and was honored to serve on the NIH’s ethics committee.
After returning to Colorado she served as Medical Director of Hospice and Palliative Care Services at Lutheran Hospital in Wheat Ridge for just over 6 years. There, she worked with talented teams of interdisciplinary professionals to further the development of an inpatient consult service and home-based palliative care service. On the hospice side, she and her teams were selected to be a clinical training site for a new Palliative Care fellowship program at St. Joseph Hospital. As a continuation of her commitment to education, she is also a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado.
Dr. Ryan is passionate about providing compassionate, effective multidisciplinary care to older adults and their families facing serious illnesses and end of life. She is thrilled to be a part of the excellent care provided by Bloom Healthcare and Hospice. In her off time she enjoys gardening, reading, baking, and spending time with her husband and two dogs.
