A Journey to
Emergency Medicine

Yet when it came time to pursue his dream of attending medical school, Graterol faced a seemingly overwhelming obstacle: cost.

“Our family didn’t have much in terms of built-up wealth so when I came back [to the U.S.], I lived with my godparents for a little while,” he says. “I knew a scholarship was the only way that I was going to get through medical school.”

So when the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth offered Graterol the financial aid that made a medical education possible, it was a life-changing opportunity. That support paved the way for him to pursue not only a medical degree but also a career rooted in service to others. “I honestly don’t know where my career would be if I didn’t get a chance to be at Geisel, so I’m very appreciative of the people who made those scholarships possible,” Graterol says.

The Geisel scholarship opened more than just the door to medical education. It empowered Graterol to practice medicine in a way that reflects his values—providing high-quality care to marginalized and underserved populations, and inspiring future generations of doctors from similar backgrounds to do the same.

“One of the benefits of Geisel is it exposes you to a lot of different clinical contexts,” Graterol explains. “It’s not only working at Dartmouth Hitchcock [Medical Center]. You get a chance to do rotations in a lot of rural and urban areas, too. I did a rotation in Portland, Maine; one in southern New Hampshire; and another in San Francisco.”

Each of these rotations immersed Graterol in new communities and allowed him to see firsthand the diverse ways healthcare is delivered across different populations. It was his rotation in San Francisco and his involvement in The Urban Health Scholars (UHS) program at Geisel that deepened Graterol’s passion for working with underserved urban populations. “We went on trips to Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere to learn about health problems specific to urban areas and how different places went about solving them,” he shares.

Through the UHS program, Graterol also helped develop a comprehensive Medical Spanish and Cultural Competency program, with electives, service-learning opportunities, and other enrichment activities for Geisel students, which the school continues to offer. “Spanish conversationally isn’t the same as communicating with Spanish-speaking patients in a medical setting,” he explains.

Now, as an emergency physician in San Francisco, Graterol uses these skills often. “Being in San Francisco, I get to use [Spanish] very regularly while working at the ER and just living in a place with a large Latinx population.”

At Geisel, Graterol not only honed his clinical skills but also gained the values and tools that would define his career. “All the skills—the whole patient-centered approach Dartmouth teaches, the empathetic communication techniques like motivational interviewing—I use to this day and try to teach to all my residents and students,” he says.

Today, as assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Graterol is shaping the next generation of physicians. He mentors young doctors, advocates for diversity, equity, and inclusion in medicine, and develops innovative tools to address healthcare disparities. “Much of my work is to find pathways for people with disadvantaged backgrounds to both become physicians and work within emergency medicine,” he says.