ST. MARYS, Georgia: March 8, 2012 – Southeast Georgia Health System
is pleased to announce that Thomas C. Whitesell Jr., M. D., has been selected
as the new chief of staff for the Camden Campus.
Whitesell replaces former chief Robert Wilson, M.D., who has resigned.
Whitesell formerly served as vice chief. Oral maxillofacial surgeon Diane
Pennington, DMD, M.D., is now filling that position. Other new appointments
to the staff are internal medicine physician Richard Ceniza, M.D., chief
of medicine, and internal medicine physician Lisa Carlson, M.D., vice
chief of medicine.
Whitesell, a board-certified internal medicine physician, joined Southeast
Georgia Physician Associates-Internal Medicine, a strategic affiliate
of the Health System, in 2006. While in high school he became an Eagle
Scout with the Boy Scouts of America before going on to earn a bachelor’s
degree in philosophy from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He
then completed general graduate studies at Valdosta State University in
Valdosta, Ga. He also attended both the U.S. Army Air Assault School and
the U.S. Army Airborne School and became a nationally registered emergency
medicine technician. Whitesell taught high school, first at Brantley High
School in Nahunta, Ga., where he also coached junior varsity baseball,
and then at Warner Robins High School in Warner Robins, Ga., where he
taught advanced placement biology and anatomy. He was then accepted at
Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Ga., where he gradated
with his medical degree in 2000. Whitesell completed his residency in
internal medicine at the University of Alabama.
Whitesell is also a former medical director of Charlton County Volunteer
Fire Department. In 2011, he received Intermediate/Advanced Specials Weapons
and Tactics (SWAT) Certification and serves as the Kingsland Police Department
Special Response Team (SRT) tactical medical officers. Whitesell is a
member of the American College of Physicians and the American Society
of Internal Medicine.
Whitesell is married to Janise Whitesell, M.D., a family medicine physician
at Camden Family Medicine Center, a strategic affiliate of Southeast Georgia
Health System and who is also a member of the Camden Campus medical staff,
and they have two daughters, Liliana Claire and Lena Kathryn.