Kirsten Gibbs Nieto, M.D.

Kirsten Nieto, M.D., is an associate professor in the departments of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Dell Medical School. Nieto is board-certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics and works as hospitalist with expertise in the care of sick, hospitalized adults and children. She supervises internal medicine and pediatric residents as well as medical students at Dell Seton Medical Center and Dell Children’s Medical Center.

Nieto is the associate chief for the Division of Hospital Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at Dell Med. Previously, she served as the interim division chief in Hospital Medicine from Sept. 2019 to Aug. 2020, leading the initial inpatient COVID-19 response among hospitalists and internal medicine residents at Dell Seton Medical Center. For this, she was recognized by the medical staff at Dell Seton as physician of the year in 2020. In addition to being appointed to the Ascension Texas Board of Directors, Nieto serves on the Dell Seton Utilization Review, Readmissions and Throughput committees. She also serves on Dell Med’s Undergraduate Medical Education Curriculum Committee and was previously in the Dell Med faculty senate from 2017-2019.

Nieto’s professional areas of interest include bridging the transition from pediatric to adult health care for individuals with complex chronic conditions beginning in childhood, evidence-based and opioid-sparing pain management strategies, the use of order-sets and clinical informatics to improve outcomes, and value-based inpatient health care.

Nieto was the top graduate in the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech in 2004 and also earned the prestigious institutional title of Mrs. Georgia Tech in 2003. She graduated AOA from Vanderbilt School of Medicine in 2008, then “couples matched” with her husband, Mario, an anesthesiologist, at Baylor College of Medicine. There, she completed a four-year medicine-pediatrics residency, followed by an internal medicine chief residency at Ben Taub General Hospital and St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, Texas. Nieto’s hobbies include coaching her twin daughters in soccer and exploring Texas’ state and national parks with her family. She has held several leadership positions, including membership on the Dell Med’s Pediatric Clerkship Task Force, the Education and Quality Review Committee and Baylor College of Medicine’s Graduate Medical Education Committee.