22 Oct John Calabro, DO: A 2025 Unsung Hero

Almost nothing is guaranteed in the Emergency Department but if you’re looking for some things you can count on, know that Dr. Calabro will be working night shifts and he will have brought snacks.

For nearly 20 years, Dr. Calabro has been a mainstay in the SIUH ED overnight. Whether working at the north campus or heading to the south shore at SIUH Princes Bay, Dr. Calabro has served our community with a combination of patience, intelligence, kindness and wit that only a lifelong nocturnist can possess. His ability to identify with each patient and make them feel comfortable is unmatched. He makes jokes with patients who are his peers, silly faces with his pediatric patients and offers compassion with a hand on the shoulder or a seat on the bed with the patients he knows need a little extra reassurance.

Calabro’s ability to identify with his patients is matched only by his ability to provide them with exceptional medical care. Though he’s been at this for a while, he never misses an opportunity to learn something new, keeping up to date with evidence based, current emergency medicine practices. He is a wealth of knowledge and a go-to curbside consultant for both our residents and his colleagues. Not uncommonly his response to a question starting with, “I had this case once…”

As a former Staten Island resident whose family lives close by, I take comfort in knowing that there is a person like him to care for my loved ones when they walk through the door.

It’s hard to say exactly what makes Dr. Calabro’s contribution to SIUH unique. It’s not that he has any one specific characteristic that separates him from the rest of our top-notch staff, its so many things all rolled into one. It’s the way he picks up extra shifts when it’s needed, sees his own patients when the department is busy and projects a feeling of calm when the ED is anything but. It’s the way he takes the few but precious moments when things are just a bit slow to make personal connections with his residents, nurses and fellow attendings. It’s the way he tells stories about his wife and kids, speaking with pride about their accomplishments and humor about the antics that so many of us as parents can identify with.

Dr. Calabro is an unsung hero in every sense of the word, a friend, mentor, curbside consultant and nighttime snack connoisseur. I am lucky to get to work beside him three nights a week.

Recipient Bio:
Dr. Calabro attended medical school at NYCOM from 1999 to 2003, serving as class president and unsurprisingly being awarded the Dean’s Achievement Award for Overall Academic Excellence. He then moved on to North Shore University Hospital where he completed his residency in 2006. Luckily for us, he took a job at Staten Island University Hospital and has been committed to serving the people of Staten Island since.

– Anna Van Tuyl, MD