Husband and Wife Named to Best Doctors List

​A Columbia husband and wife, both P&S graduates, were both named to New York magazine’s 2013 Best Doctors list. Peter Shapiro’80 and Carrie Ruzal-Shapiro’82 have been included in the list individually in previous years, but this is the first time they have been honored in the same year. 

The couple met while undergraduates at Princeton, as dishwashers in the same dining hall. Peter entered P&S in 1976, and Carrie followed suit in 1978. Both completed residencies at NYP/Columbia—Peter in psychiatry in 1984 and Carrie in radiology in 1988. 

Peter is a consultation-liaison psychiatrist who does psychiatric evaluations for medical patients suffering from physical illness. Ironically, it was Carrie’s psychiatry clerkship that led to Peter’s career choice: While in medical school, she didn’t particularly enjoy her psychiatry rotation, but Peter, a medical intern at the time, enjoyed reading her homework assignments so much that he decided to switch from medicine to psychiatry. 

Carrie, a Brooklyn native whose parents were immigrants, decided at a young age to become a doctor. She began as a pediatrician before specializing in radiology, for which she was board certified in 1988. She has been at Columbia for 35 years, first as a medical student, then professor, past director of the radiology residency program, and chief of pediatric radiology. She was awarded the distinguished teacher award by the Class of 2002.