Fellow Perspectives

Just one last thank-you for the opportunity to do the fellowship. This has been the most rewarding year in medicine. Sometimes I can hardly believe the year is almost over. I hope all the fellows find this as great of an experience as I have. I still consider myself lucky to have been chosen. — Daunyale Sporaa, DO Iowa

I am in practice Wadena Medical Center, Wadena MN. I graduated from OB Fellowship 6/92, and have been here since. My clinic has 7 family practice MD's, and all do OB. I still do C-Sections. Overall I was happy with the time I spent at FMS. — John Pate, MD Wadena, Minnesota

I feel that my OB skills were excellent after finishing the fellowship. My knowledge base was higher than most FPs where I practiced. I had a lot more comfort handling more complicated cases. — Carol Grench, MD Davis, California

Things are going great here. I am already full. My OB population is growing weekly. I have had the chance to do about 15 SVD, manage a severe preeclamptic, and crash section a 26wk abruption footling breech. The fellowship has provided me with skills that I could only have dreamed of (or received from a residency in OB/GYN). I am sure that all of the past fellows are huge supporters of the fellowship, I just may be the biggest. — Richard Swenson, MD Yreka, California

My partners and I are actually privileged to do obstetrics at the university hospital here (Regional Medical Center) where the obstetrics residency is based. God has been gracious in providing us with a fairly positive relationship with the residents and the attendings, and they have been very nice overall about providing back up and allowing us to do our C-sections. It's been a mixed privilege to be delivering our patients though, as it's been real busy and there are only three of us in our practice who do obstetrics. But it's certainly better than the fellowship schedule, although mixing office practice and the unpredictability of obstetrics can get quite interesting. Our clinic population is a wonderful and challenging mixture of poorer inner city clients, refugees and mainly undocumented Latino patients. Although I miss the natural beauty of Spokane, as well as some wonderful people I have met there, Memphis is starting to take its special place in my heart. It's certainly a place of history, diversity, and truly, the blues. — Sung Son, MD Memphis, Tennessee

The fellowship was the hardest most satisfying year of my training. It was up to date, practical, and made just for FPs who want to do obstetrics in a rural community. It gave me the confidence to do c-sections when an ob/gyn is 30 miles away. The teaching by perinatologists ensured cutting edge learning. It truly was a hand's on learning experience. By the way, you could also sell people on the area. I didn't know about the u-pick fruit in Green Bluff. We figured it out the following summer. I am totally ruined on peaches and other fruit as you certainly can't get a peach in Wyoming that even compares with one picked of the tree. — Bonnie Randolph, MD Wyoming

As far as what I did with my training--it served me very well for my first and second practices. My first year out I practiced in Ellensburg. I did a ton of OB and took call to cover the only OB in town, so I did lots of high-risk stuff, as the only game in town. Given the relative isolation of Ellensburg, I was a bit uncomfortable in this role. I felt like I could use a bit more back up than was available. I'm not a good cowboy I guess. We then moved to the other side of the mountains, to Skagit Valley. I did a lot of OB, took call with the only OB in our multispecialty group of 30 doctors. and felt like I did what I was trained to do--lots of c/sections, consults on high risk patients for other FP's--but there were OB's in other groups in case I felt over my head. I had a very good working relationship with the OB's in town, and did not feel like competition was ever an issue. I think family physicians can certainly be trained to do surgical ob, but I do not feel the fellowship can make mini-obstetricians out of physicians who are not primarily surgically trained. — Gail Hacker, MD Eugene, Oregon

I remember my year in Spokane fondly. The training I received focused my career in a direction that it otherwise would have not taken. After leaving the fellowship, I was the Maternal and Child Health Coordinator for Brown University Family Practice Residency Program for 10 years. We started our own OB Fellowship in 1991 that includes a Master of Public Health as well as operative obstetrics. I am one of two family physicians who received cesarean section privileges at Boston Medical Center. — Brian Jack, MD; Associate Professor/Vice Chair of Academic Affairs, Department of Family Medicine, Boston University Medical Center/Boston Medical Center

Last Updated Thursday, June 30 2011 @ 02:48 PM PDT|644 Hits