Dr. Leahna Cooney is a board certified, fellowship trained critical care surgeon with experience in trauma and emergency general surgery. Her clinical interests include abdominal wall reconstruction, chest wall trauma, disaster preparedness, community outreach, and educating medical learners.
Dr. Cooney’s medical career began as a registered nurse in the Burn Intensive Care Unit and the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania. After several years there, Dr. Cooney returned to school and earned her medical degree at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond, Virginia. She completed a general surgery residency at UPMC Pinnacle in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and was fellowship trained in surgical critical care at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Before joining Capital Health, Dr. Cooney was a trauma and acute care surgeon at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, where she also served as medical director of the Transitional Trauma Unit. Most recently, Dr. Cooney was a locum tenens provider (or travelling doctor), supporting understaffed health care systems by providing emergency general surgery and surgical critical care in hospitals and trauma centers throughout the United States.
In academic settings, Dr. Cooney has published research in peer-reviewed journals and served as a surgical resident clinical educator at NYU Langone – Long Island in Mineola, New York; Penn State Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania; Parkview Health in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and at Lehigh Valley Health Network. She is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a member of the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, and the American Association for Surgery of Trauma.
In her free time, Dr. Cooney’s personal interests include reading classic literature, outdoor running, and high-intensity interval training as well as spending time with family and friends.