Anastasia Grivoyannis, MD

Bronx, NY and Short Hills, NJ

I was interested in everything growing up, but my parents also instilled in me a belief in service. I had a love of science, technology, and math, but also reading, foreign languages, and art. As a child, I anticipated I’d grow up to be a painter/scientist/teacher all-in-one. In college, I discovered organic chemistry. Chemistry was intuitive to me: simultaneously computational, complex, left-brained, and spatial, creative, right-brained.

Towards the end of college, I discovered the work of Lewis Thomas. The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher made me realize how a single cell is monumentally more complex than any of the molecules I was synthesizing in the lab. Dr. Thomas’ last books, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher and The Fragile Species, instilled in me a respect and awe for the service of physicians and an appreciation for medicine as a nascent science. Its infancy was really the 20th century, when compared to fields like physics and chemistry. I also realized how much I enjoyed serving my community as an EMT first responder at the time.

I became an anesthesiologist because every day I get to think about how molecules as simple as 2 6-diisopropylphenol (commercially Propofol) have the power to pause human consciousness. I cannot pretend to understand human consciousness in the manner that some scientists are studying it, but I have the privilege (and the great responsibility) of tinkering with it every day. The field of anesthesiology innately is about alleviating suffering, and while I may no longer have the lofty goals of discovering a vaccine against malaria, I do get the daily satisfaction that I have alleviated someone’s suffering (or potential suffering) when they undergo surgery.

I have been practicing in the area since 2018 when I came to Baltimore, MD as a pediatric anesthesiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. I moved to Washington, DC in 2022 and expanded my practice to the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia.

I have been a field worker for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) since 2017. I do not consider it volunteer work, but an extension of my job and fulfillment of my value to serve those in need. It has been a privilege to serve with MSF in 2017 as a trauma anesthesiologist for Syrian refugees at Za’atari Refugee Camp near Ramtha, Jordan; in 2018 as a pediatric anesthesiologist at Bardnesville Junction Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia in a post-Ebola context; and in 2019 as an anesthesiologist and airway management expert for children and adults suffering from noma in Sokoto, Nigeria. I look forward to the next opportunity to train, learn, and collaborate with the international talent that MSF cultivates.

Can I state my childhood dream of being a painter/scientist/teacher all-in-one? My adult-self thinks I might have made a good high school chemistry teacher or perhaps an art conservator.