Amanda Skillern, M.D., FACOG

Amanda Skillern,M.D., FACOG, is an assistant professor for the Department of Women’s Health at Dell Medical School.

A native Texan, she completed her baccalaureate with both departmental (psychology) and college (Plan II) honors at The University of Texas at Austin. These studies culminated in an honors thesis in health psychology in the area of women’s sexual and reproductive health, solidifying her interest in this area.

She completed a medical degree at Texas Tech University and a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. She then completed a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology/infertility at the University of California, San Francisco. Skillern then returned to Texas to fulfill both her personal dream of practicing reproductive medicine in Austin and her patients’ dreams of building families. She is board certified in both obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive endocrinology and infertility and practices at Fora Fertility.

Skillern’s areas of interest include ovarian reserve in the context of both natural ovarian aging and in response to chemotherapy and radiation. She is interested in options to extend fertility including oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing), embryo cryopreservation (embryo banking) and oocyte donation. Her basic science research has focused on the process by which primordial follicles (eggs) diminish in the context of ovarian aging and in response to chemotherapy. This research informs her novel approaches in the clinic to women with diminished ovarian reserve and women with cancer in need of fertility preservation.

With her women’s health psychology background, she is also passionate about the psychology and ethics of fertility. She has published in the area of ethics and oocyte donation, creating the first and only tool addressing the informed consent process for oocyte donors, the EDICT (Egg Donor Informed Consent Tool). This work informs her biopsychosocial approach to her patients, focusing on all aspects of the patient experience: biological, psychological and social.

Skillern views assisting patients in their family-building journeys as her life’s work, and she is honored to collaborate with Dell Medical School in this capacity.