Kathryn Sellman, MD

Biography

Generating excitement in the field of Geriatrics

For Dr. Kathryn Sellman, a geriatrician on the VCU Health Home Based Primary Care team, caring for older adults is about seeing the patient as a whole person. "We do all we can to navigate the challenges that come with aging together as a team,” she says.  The program is for people that are too sick to come to a clinic and is one of VCU Medical Center’s oldest clinical programs, originating in 1984.

So patients don’t come to Dr. Sellman — she comes to them.

“I feel honored to care for patients and their families as they walk through elderhood or living with chronic illness,” she says. “And I want to generate excitement for geriatrics in the next generation of providers.”

Dr. Sellman earned her medical degree at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and completed her internal medicine residency at the VCU School of Medicine. During her VCU internal medicine residency, she was honored with the John M. Witherspoon, MD Award for Excellence in Primary Care. But that time also helped shape her career: during a geriatrics rotation her intern year, she accompanied a physician on home visits with the Central Virginia VA Health Care System, “and I saw firsthand both the complexity and joy of caring for homebound patients,” she recalls. “It is amazing what you can learn about a patient by being in their home.” She then went on to complete a fellowship in geriatric medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and returned to VCU as a geriatrician in 2024.

Dr. Sellman specializes in caring for people with multiple complex medical problems and has broad expertise across a range of conditions such as dementia, heart disease and failure, chronic lung and kidney disease, joint pain and mobility issues, strokes and more. Treatment of any combination of the conditions she sees begins with understanding a patient’s goals for their care. Within VCU Home Based Primary Care, a team of doctors, advanced practice providers, nurses, social workers and staff are in constant contact with each other and meet weekly to discuss patient updates. “Home-based primary care functions only with the support and work of an interdisciplinary team,” she says. Home visits are made during weekday daylight hours to patients living within 15 miles of the hospital, which covers a significant portion of Central Virginia.

Dr. Sellman also knows she can’t take care of others without taking care of herself: at her own home, she enjoys walking in the sunshine, practicing yoga and making meals with her family’s homegrown vegetables.