What motivated you to become a health care service professional?
My wonderment and respect for how the amazing human body works initially led me to study biology with hopes of becoming a high school teacher. I changed my mind and became a doctor because I wanted to use that knowledge to directly help people become and remain healthy. The more that people let me into their lives as their doctor, the more driven I am to want to do this. It is truly a rewarding experience to be a doctor and I look forward to going to work every day. I think I have the greatest job in the world.
What level of training and education are essential today for a professional to provide the kinds of service you deliver?
You need a strong liberal arts education to see the “big picture” of life before entering medical school. One then needs a strong medical education and residency training in which you see many patients with a wide variety of illnesses. Medicine is a profession that must be learned by first-hand experience. Residency training must never be shortchanged by “hour” requirements because the more patients one sees, the better the physician one becomes.
In what areas of health services do you perceive the greatest need and why?
In an ever increasingly complex world of medicine, the most important need is to preserve the primacy of each patient as an individual person with unique needs – not as a disease entity, but as a whole person. We must treat the patient holistically, caring for the mind and the spirit as well as the body. A physician must recognize this and keep it uppermost in his or her mind while interacting with patients.
What are the greatest challenges you face in your role as a health care service professional?
The challenge is to ensure that patients receive the health care they need and deserve, regardless of their ability to pay. In light of the recent U.S. Preventive Services’ task force recommendations on mammography, this concern is even greater. The lives of many women aged 40-50 and over 75 have been saved by having a mammogram. The benefits of early detection are clear, and to change the recommendations at this time is just wrong.
How will the kinds of health care reforms being considered, if enacted, affect the way you and/or your organization deliver services?
While we do not know the specifics of the healthcare reform package that will ultimately be adopted, my concerns are about the rationing of health care based on arbitrary guidelines, the lack of adequate numbers of primary health care physicians to provide frontline preventive care for patients, and the underprioritization of prevention and early detection of disease. My uppermost concern is the loss of the individual patient in a new system where the individual is not considered important.â–
STATS:
Position: Physician, Director
Comprehensive Breast Health Center
St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center
Quote: My uppermost concern is the loss of the individual patient in a new system where the individual is not considered important.
