Meet the Director and Team

Welcome from the Program Director

I am very excited you are choosing to explore a career in family medicine and have interest in our program. Our program and its faculty are dedicated to teaching evidence-based medicine in a community hospital setting. We believe this combination allows our residents to have an excellent academic education while learning life-long wellness. Our goal is to foster a positive cultural environment, where teamwork and collegiality exists between residents and faculty, to result in a safe and comfortable space for intellectual curiosity and continued growth of medical knowledge. We understand each resident doctor presents with varied strengths and abilities, and we enjoy getting to know our residents as we collaborate to create an individual learning plan from the start of residency that ensures resident success and completion. Through mentorship, we work to foster improvements and support in areas that are challenging to each individual resident, and help residents become mastered learners.

I have been with Mercy Health since 2011 and explored a myriad of different leadership opportunities throughout the years. This is, by far, the most important role I have been entrusted with and I feel very honored to lead our program. Our community-based residency program has significant support from both the sponsoring hospital, Mercy Health – Anderson Hospital, and the sponsoring system, Bon Secours Mercy Health. Our residents train at Mercy Health – Anderson Hospital for most rotations, which is recognized by the American Heart Association for its excellence in heart failure, heart attack and stroke care, and was named a top 100-performing large, community hospital. Bon Secours Mercy Health has a family of more than 50 residency programs. This network of excellence in graduate medical education has led to our success. This support continues through Anderson Township, the Cincinnati region, and our tristate service area.

As you know by now, there are many options for family physicians after graduation. Starting early in training, we work to tailor specific educational needs through strategic selection of elective rotations to ensure each resident graduates with the knowledge needed to meet specific career goals. We model and teach cost-effective, sensitive and compassionate care that considers our patients’ specific psychosocial needs. We ensure our residents have a variety of different community health experiences to learn how to take care of patients from all backgrounds. Additionally, each faculty member has spent some time in private practice and teaches the clinical efficiencies and practices needed to prevent burnout after graduation. 

A specific, required experience occurring throughout residency includes completing research and scholarly activity. While research and scholarly activity may not be everyone’s preferred activity, our program works with each individual resident to discuss topics that are important to you! Once your interest in a topic is discussed, faculty members collaborate with you to learn how you want to proceed to meaningfully create or contribute to a body of knowledge and/or make practice improvements. This might include participating in a quality improvement project, authoring a journal article or chapter book, presenting a scholarly poster or podium presentation at a conference, among many other options. Our program and its faculty impart research expertise and an interest in this type of work to our residents through activities that render approximately a dozen produced scholarly activities annually! Our residents have a precedent of presenting at national conferences, authoring for prominent family medicine journals or keeping it small-scaled at local and regional scholarly day events – the choice is yours.

The "community" piece in family and community medicine is intentionally upheld in our program and prominent in our curricula. Our faculty’s many years of experience and knowledge in graduate medical education has been hallmarked in prominence of knowing the history of family medicine, and most importantly, the future of family medicine, and that includes the community we serve. The future of family medicine now includes and emphasizes intentional integration of diversity and inclusivity, resident wellness and behavioral health components in patient care. All of your historical "bread and butter" family medicine learning is now bolstered with a curriculum of integrating these areas into your residency learning. This is accomplished in meaningful learning opportunities that connects you with the community, and further develops your personal and professional identity.

While we practice family medicine, we are also a family system as a program. Our residents have formed a family community amongst themselves and their families, supporting each other and welcoming each new class. Social activities are regularly organized to promote social connectedness and wellness. Residency is a shared experience among its residents and faculty, and experiencing fun is an integral part of your personal and professional journey.

If this sounds like a program you would like to consider for your residency experience, please apply via ERAS. I look forward to meeting and supporting you to accomplish your career goals.

Wishing you a successful match and career!

Allegra R. Tenkman, MD | Program Director Medical School: University of Cincinnati College of Medicine Residency: Bethesda North Hospital Fellowship: The Community Primary Care Champion Fellowship, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine Dr. Tenkman joined Bon Secours Mercy Health in 2011, working in a busy outpatient practice on the west side of Cincinnati. Since 2011, she had numerous leadership roles, including value-based care champion, EPIC physician builder certification, regional medical director, Primary Care Executive Council member and west side outpatient COVID clinic site director. She received several awards related to compassionate care, quality care and leadership during that time, including Mercy Health’s C.A.R.E Champion recipient, Mercy Health’s Excellence in Mission Award recipient, “Top 50” Quality Award and Venue Magazine’s “Rising Star Medical Leader” recipient. She joined Mercy Health – Anderson Hospital’s Family and Community Medicine Residency Program in 2021 where she plans to stay for the remainder of her career.

Jillian Atherton, EdD, LPCC-S | Assistant Program Director Dr. Atherton serves as the assistant residency program director and director of behavioral medicine at the Family and Community Medicine Residency Program at Mercy Health – Anderson Hospital. She has worked in the fields of higher education, graduate medical education, clinical counseling and research for 20 years, both in public and private sectors. She received her doctorate in education leadership and policy studies at Eastern Kentucky University, specializing in graduate medical education. As a licensed professional clinical counselor (LPCC), her clinical practice is established on an integrated therapeutic community philosophy, where patients actively engage in mental health treatment with a primary focus on treating anxiety, depression and trauma, using talk therapies, particularly from a bio-psycho-social perspective. While serving patients in the family and community medicine practice, she additionally provides sports behavioral medicine to the FC Cincinnati and Cincinnati Ballet Company professional sports teams. She is certified in EEG biofeedback (neurofeedback), and provides individual, group and family therapy. Research interests include multigenerational synchronicity, athletes and mental health, wellness, diversity, graduate medical education andragogical practices, women and gender studies, as well as behavioral health outcomes in primary care. In her personal time, she enjoys attending live music and sporting events, reading, playing guitar, cooking and spending time with family.

Core Faculty

Farzad Mazloomi, MD
Rebecca Morris, MD
Jason Patel, MD
Paula Peake, MD
Herb Schumm, MD

Community Preceptors/Clinical Faculty

Nina Oberschmidt, DO
James O'Dea, MD
Katheryne Ruck, DO
Risa Spieldoch, MD

Contact Us

Program Coordinator: Aimee Mezher
Email: amezher@mercy.com
Phone: 513-233-6978