Dr. Kristen Toups practices internal medicine at Ochsner Health. Dr. Toups is a Louisiana native who graduated cum laude from Tulane University, where she studied Cell and Molecular Biology and English Literature. She completed her Masters in Public Health at the Tulane School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, and then received her medical degree with honors from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Following this, she completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Toups is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine. She has been elected to Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society ('15 U of Washington), elected Fellow in the American College of Physicians, and elected Senior Physician at Ochsner Health. She is a Senior Lecturer in Medicine for the University of Queensland Ochsner Clinical School. Dr. Toups serves as the Vice Chair for Operations in the Department of Hospital Medicine at Ochsner Medical Center - New Orleans and the Medical Director of the Hospital Medicine stepdown unit. She and her department have been awarded 2020 Ochsner Health system clinical department of the year and 2021 Ochsner Medical Center clinical department of the year for exceptional work in the COVID-19 pandemic. She is the founding medical director for the Ochsner Hospital Medicine Point of Care Ultrasound Program. As a lifelong educator, Dr. Toups' clinical practice focuses on academic hospital medicine at Ochsner Medical Center - New Orleans, providing inpatient care and teaching medical students and resident physicians the art and science of internal medicine. She was awarded Internal Medicine Teacher of the Year in 2019 by the Ochsner clinical school. She is active in research surrounding COVID-19 and community acquired pneumonia therapeutics in the hospital. In her free time, Dr. Toups enjoys spending time with her family, writing narrative medicine essays and attempting to get them published and building her native pollinator garden.