Faculty Focus: Dr. Rebecca Edgeworth, School of Physician Assistant Studies

Aug 26, 2019

Before becoming a doctor, Rebecca Edgeworth always knew she would have a career in medicine.

“I thought a lot about what my role would be in medicine and thought that being a doctor would be where I could make the most impact,” she said.

As the daughter of an Air Force father, Edgeworth was born in Las Vegas but lived in several states across the U.S., including Nebraska, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Georgia.

For medical school, Edgeworth attended the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, the place where she fell in love with internal medicine. It’s also where she learned the importance of educating others about why they should give back to the people in their community. 

“Florida has an older and very sick population, so I really learned to appreciate internal medicine there,” she said. “In medical school, I worked at a clinic for uninsured, low-income residents in the community. It made a huge impact on me. My experience in that clinic inspired me to help educate others why that work is so important.”

After medical school, Edgeworth returned to Southern Nevada to complete her internal medicine residency at UMC. She said doing her residency far from where she went to school gave her an advantage, especially during her experience with UMC’s transient population.

“I felt like I had double the learning experience getting to come back home,” she said. “The opportunity to learn at UMC was amazing. There were plenty of high-acuity patients, and it was a very academic setting. There was great diversity among the population, including working with the LGBTQ population which was much more diverse than in other cities.”

Before joining Touro University Nevada as an Assistant Professor in the School of Physician Assistant Studies, Edgeworth spent seven years as the Medical Director at Volunteers of Medicine of Southern Nevada (VMSN).

Similar to the clinic where she volunteered as a medical student, VMSN is a free clinic for Southern Nevada’s uninsured residents. As medical director, Edgeworth worked as a clinical instructor for Touro’s physician assistant (PA) and osteopathic medical (DO) students.

She also spearheaded the clinic’s outreach initiatives and partnerships within the community. She’s excited to help with Touro’s outreach efforts while teaching students the same lessons she learned in medical school.

“I think exposing students early in their education to underserved populations is incredibly important to connecting them to the community,” she said. “It gives them a more realistic view of what others are going through.”

Having worked with Touro’s PA students and faculty as VMSN’s Medical Director, Edgeworth is already settling in as the program’s newest Assistant Professor. 

“I’m very excited to prepare students for their clinical experiences. I want to help educate them about important topics like cultural competence and low-health literacy,” she said. “I just enjoy teaching students a love for caring for the people in their community.”