What made you want to enter the medicine field?

My football coach in high school came to me one day in his chemistry class and asked me, “What am I going to do when I get out of high school.” I started stumbling on my words I just said Med School. He said “Alright, don’t’ change your mind.”

I was confused at first why I said that because I wanted to be a meteorologist, I wanted to be a photographer, but I said med school, so I figured I might as well stick with it. The more I looked into it, the more I realized that’s kind of cool. I ended up staying in Philadelphia at Temple University for undergraduate all the way through med school. And never looked back.

What attracted you to the Brown Family Medicine Residency?

When I was interviewing for residencies, I looked all over the place, and it just so happen that I knew one of the early residents at Brown. I contacted the person I knew and came up for an interview and it was nice to know somebody in the program already.  I fell in love with the directors at the time, Dr. Cunningham in particular. It just seemed like for family medicine, it was a very family-oriented environment and very supportive. I looked at other places and they just seemed very sterile & rigid. Brown seemed more like the family medicine concept that I always thought of. 

What valuable lessons did you learn from your time at Brown in residency? 

“Shut up and listen” is what one of my mentors, a doctor from New Zeeland (his name escapes me) said.  I can hear it today a million years later. Just shut up, introduce yourself and the patient will tell you what you need to know. You don’t even have to ask. 

The patient will tell you and if they tell you something that doesn’t make sense, just shut up and wait and they will finally tell you what is really going on.  I think that was the biggest lesson I remember and that worked well in trauma centers, department on transportation, IMEs, etc., just listen. 

What are you most proud of in your career?

That I was able to make a difference in some of the organization that I worked at. I’ve been very interested in population health. So, when I was running my clinics in Glaxo or the clinic at Nissan and somebody comes in and hurts their back OR they get headaches and they can’t get their job done. 

I have been able to look at the bigger picture and get a better perspective on what is actually going on. That’s the stuff that I learned at Brown. Sit back, look at the whole person and you’ll see things you won’t believe. I’ve always been proud of that. 

Then when you do that, you generate a lot of information and data. You can then look at the population stats and say when you see this and this, you can almost predict that this is going to happen. Why are we focusing on high cholesterol in this group, when we should be talking about problems and things that relate. I’ve always been able to focus my efforts on the population at risk. 

Do you keep in touch with your former residents? 

Absolutely! Over the last 3-4 years I have become the designated get everybody together guy. About this time every year out of the 12 residents, we have 10 living and out of the 10 living, eight I was able to locate. All eight of us together via email and occasional a text. It’s just really neat to see what is going on and the different directions everybody took. 

What advice do you have for current residents?

Work-life balance,110%. There were 1-2 of us in the program that seemed to get out when the night we weren’t on call. We got out by 5 – 5:15 and everybody else was there until the late hours. I just had the mindset of get your stuff done, you have a whole life behind you, kids waiting for you, girlfriends, husbands, etc. …get home. 

That really made a difference. I felt more comfortable, I wasn’t stressed out and I felt refreshed in the morning and the relationships I had survived.

Who were your mentors?

When I got to Brown, I met the other residents two years before me and they became friends. We used to go out together to the pool halls and even had a bowling team. I talked with my friends in other programs, and they were like “WHAT?!?!” you do all that?” I’m still in touch with a bunch of the residents today, which is neat!