Carolyn Rennels, MD
Assistant Professor
Medicine
School of Medicine

Carolyn Rennels, MD, is a palliative care physician who practices in the outpatient and inpatient clinical settings. Rennels earned her medical degree at UCSF, where she also completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in palliative medicine.

Awards

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• Fellow of the Year - Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship, UCSF, 2024

Education & Training

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• Resident Internal Medicine University of California, San Francisco 06/2023
• MD Medicine University of California, San Francisco 06/2020
• BA Human Biology Stanford University 06/2014
• Fellow Palliative Medicine University of California, San Francisco 06/024

Publications (7)

Top publication keywords:
WorkplaceAdvance Care PlanningDisability EvaluationBehaviorCaregiversAdvance DirectivesPhysiciansGoalsBurnout, ProfessionalMothersFaculty, MedicalSex FactorsUniversitiesOrganizational PolicyFaculty

• Characteristics and Motivations of People With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Who Pursue Medical Aid in Dying in California.
  Neurology. Clinical practice 2025 Rennels CF, Rosow L, Pantilat S, Bell BK, Lomen-Hoerth C, Cohen E, Bischoff KE
• Disproportionate Use of Aid in Dying Among People with ALS: Why ALS aid-in-dying requests are common while ALS is rare
  Journal of Aid-in-Dying Medicine 2025 Carolyn Rennels, MD; Steven Z. Pantilat, MD, FAAHPM, MHM; Ambereen K. Mehta, MD MPH FAAMPH; Allison Kestenmaum, MA, MPA, BCC-PCHAC, ACPE; Kelsey Noble, DO; Jessica Besbris, MD; Ali Mendelson, MD; Kara…
• Health Affairs Forefront
  Supporting Perinatal Mental Health For Medical Trainees 2024 Lekshmi Santhosh, Carolyn Rennels, Jessica Lee, Christina Mangurian
• Informal Caregiving Among Faculty at a Large Academic Health Sciences University in the United States: an Opportunity for Policy Changes.
  Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry 2023 Rennels C, Murthy SG, Handley MA, Morris MD, Alldredge BK, Dahiya P, Jagsi R, Kerns JL, Mangurian C
• Journal of Pain and Symptom Management
  Patient and Caregiver Experiences of Telehealth in an Outpatient Palliative Care Center (QI121) 2023 Carolyn Rennels, MD, Kara E. Bischoff, MD, Eve Cohen, RN, Jeffrey Sicotte, MBA
• PREPARE for your care and easy-to-read advance directives increase real-time goal concordant care.
  Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 2022 Rennels CF, Barnes DE, Volow A, Shi Y, Li B, Sudore RL
• Behavioral Health and Burnout Among Physician Mothers Who Care for a Person With a Serious Health Problem, Long-term Illness, or Disability.
  JAMA internal medicine 2019 Yank V, Rennels C, Linos E, Choo EK, Jagsi R, Mangurian C