Dr. Patel was born and raised in New York, where she attended Cornell University as an undergraduate student. She then moved to California and obtained a Master of Public Health degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Though she loved public health, she decided that, ultimately, she needed to become a doctor to accomplish her goals. Her first goal, however, was to dedicate time to the underserved; therefore, she spent a year in rural Colorado (Fort Morgan, to be exact) working at a health care center through the AmeriCorps program. Dr. Patel then moved back to California and earned her M.D. degree from the University of California, Irvine. She returned to the East Coast and did residency in General Surgery at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. It was in DC that she met her husband and had their first child, a daughter. Further training took her to Orlando, Florida, where she completed a fellowship in Acute Care Surgery (a combination of Surgical Critical Care, Trauma Surgery, and Emergency General Surgery). Dr. Patel then worked as an Acute Care Surgeon in Lakeland, Florida, for five years, during which time she had her second child, a son. Finally, she and her family returned to the Washington, DC area, and she proudly joined Chevy Chase Surgical Associates, P.C.

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Dr. Patel is board-certified in General Surgery and Surgical Critical Care. She is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and a member of the Association of Women Surgeons, Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, and the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma.