Dr. El-Atoum earned his Doctor of Medicine at the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan. He then went on to complete his residency in internal medicine and his fellowship in infectious disease at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo in New York.

Dr. El-Atoum's clinical interests include: general infectious disease, skin and bone infections, post-surgical infections, nosocomial infections, multi-drug resistant organisms, and HIV and HIV-related infections.