Jennifer Possick, MD, is a pulmonologist who primarily cares for patients who have had pulmonary complications resulting from cancer treatment, including side effects from chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, and stem cell transplant. She is also the director of the Winchester Center for Lung Disease pulmonary practice and the Post-COVID-19 Recovery Program, where she cares for people who have ongoing pulmonary issues after recovering from the virus.
Dr. Possick chose to focus on outpatient pulmonary medicine in part because she wanted to have the opportunity to form ongoing relationships with her patients. In college, she’d had the opportunity to work closely with a community clinic doctor who was “the archetypical family physician.” Throughout her medical training, she was guided by the way he valued his relationships with his patients and their families, and the impact this made on their lives. “Now in my own career, it is the relationships that I have with my patients and other caregivers that give me the greatest satisfaction,” Dr. Possick says.
She is excited about working in a field that is constantly evolving, offering new, life-changing therapies to so many patients. “Therapies for lung cancer continue to grow rapidly,” she says. “It is like night and day from where we were a few years ago, but with advances come new challenges.”
Dr. Possick collaborates closely with other Yale Medicine specialists at Smilow Cancer Hospital in interventional pulmonology, medical oncology, radiation oncology, and thoracic surgery, who are contributing to the body of research in these areas. She has worked with national and international colleagues to develop recommendations for future investigations into immunotherapy-related pulmonary complications with the goal of developing more comprehensive guidelines for the management of these patients.
Dr. Possick is an assistant professor of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine and the medical director of the Winchester Center for Lung Disease, where she works to train the next generation of pulmonary physicians. She works with colleagues in the clinic and across the medical center to offer pulmonary-focused, multidisciplinary evaluation and care for patients recovering from COVID-19. While most people who have been infected with the virus recover and do well, the Post-COVID-19 Recovery Program helps those who continue to experience a myriad of symptoms well beyond the acute illness, including difficulty breathing, chest discomfort and fatigue.
