Susan D. Leonard, MD

Susan D. Leonard, MD is an Associate Clinical Professor and a board-certified physician and clinician-educator in Geriatrics at UCLA. She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed her internal medicine residency at UC Davis. She returned to Los Angeles for her geriatrics fellowship at UCLA and joined the Geriatrics division thereafter.

Her clinical practice is a hybrid model, balancing inpatient, outpatient, and now more post-acute and nursing home care. Her approach is comprehensive, integrating all domains including medical, functional, cognitive, and psychosocial, with the goal to optimize the quality of life and well-being of her patients. She enjoys the interdisciplinary team approach and working with different members of the healthcare team and support staff. Her clinical interests include geriatric consultation, care transitions, post-acute, and long-term care, rehabilitation, polypharmacy, fall prevention, quality improvement initiatives, and graduate and undergraduate medical education.

She serves as the skilled nursing facility (SNF) director for the geriatric fellowship program and as the director for the UCLA post-acute rotation. She is also the co-medical director at Berkley East Healthcare Center, one of the leading nursing facilities in Santa Monica. Additionally, she is the Course Chair for the Geriatrics Clinical Skills Workshop, teaching the geriatric principals and assessment tools to second-year medical students. She also sits on various committees for the division and fellowship program.

Her life is quite busy these days as a mother of 3. She looks forward to her ongoing clinical contributions and professional development at UCLA.