Staff

Your Future Colleagues: A Team Building Something Special

You will join a cardiac anesthesia team at a defining moment in its evolution. The current group of four cardiac anesthesiologists—three women and one man—represents a young, energetic faculty who chose Temple to build something exceptional, not to disappear into an established hierarchy. They describe their team with words like “collegial,” “supportive,” and “humorous”—a culture where camaraderie makes even the toughest cases manageable.

The Cardiac Anesthesia Faculty

Your colleagues come from some of the most respected academic programs in the country, creating a collaborative team where varied training backgrounds enhance everyone’s practice:

• Monique Roberts, MD – Trained at University of Pennsylvania, bringing deep expertise from a premier program.
• Yuliana Salamanca-Padilla, MD – Penn State Hershey alumna and now Interim Chair of Anesthesiology, leading with a focus on both clinical and personal wellbeing.
• Sean Baskin, MD – Trained at Beth Israel/Harvard, offering academic rigor and polished clinical acumen.
• Danielle Pulton, MD – Also trained at University of Pennsylvania, further enriching the team’s Penn legacy.

This is a young team with families and real lives—they value work-life integration because they live it. They’re also ready to welcome more seasoned colleagues to add experience, reduce call burden, and deepen the team’s collective expertise.

The Broader Department Context

The cardiac team is part of a department with 48 anesthesiology faculty, 30 residents (10 per CA-year), one cardiothoracic fellow, and one pain medicine fellow. It’s a thriving academic environment with daily teaching and constant learning.

Faculty describe the working relationship with CRNAs as respectful and clearly defined: CRNAs cover general cases, while cardiac anesthesia remains physician-only. This allows each group to contribute where they add the most value—without turf wars or ambiguity.

Surgical Colleagues and Collaboration

You’ll collaborate with five skilled cardiac surgeons—high expectations, focused energy, and clear opinions are part of the job, but the atmosphere remains professionally respectful. Surgeons value your input and expertise, especially in complex transplant and thoracic cases.

Temple’s transplant surgeons are nationally recognized and view anesthesiologists as essential partners in delivering successful outcomes. They are engaged, collaborative, and responsive to intraoperative input—this is not a toxic, hierarchical culture.

Support Staff and Clinical Infrastructure

Your work is supported by dedicated OR teams—nurses, perfusionists, surgical techs—who know the rhythm of cardiac surgery. These professionals work exclusively in cardiac rooms and understand the demands of complex cases, contributing to a seamless OR experience.

Faculty Retention and Stability

Faculty at Temple stay because they feel valued. They cite a combination of clinical complexity, genuine collegiality, supportive leadership, and protected time off after call as key reasons they’ve chosen to build long-term careers here.

The Team You’re Joining

Many academic cardiac programs fall into one of two traps: rigid hierarchies that burn out junior faculty or transient teams with constant turnover. Temple is building something better—a growing, collaborative team where your contributions matter, call is shared equitably, and faculty invest in each other’s success.

This is a rare opportunity to join a team at the right moment—early enough to help shape its future, established enough to support you immediately, and committed enough to creating something meaningful together.