To help commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians, founded in 1948, we have launched the “Cheers to 70 Years” campaign.
All year-long, the OAFP will be sharing family medicine stories written by members about why they chose to practice family medicine.
We are excited to share our 11th story of the year with you written by Stan Anderson, MD, FAAFP, of North Canton, OH.
When I first started thinking of medicine as a career choice, I actually wanted to become a surgeon. The mystery of what was happening on the inside of the human body was fascinating to me, which had this intoxicating pull on my soul.
But as I began to have more interactions and contacts with all of the branches of medicine, I began to waver in my original dream. I realized that I loved taking care of the whole person, and not just the individual symptoms that a patient had in the present moment.
The drawback with specializing in one particular area of medicine is that you lose the opportunity to dive into everything else. So for me, a critical decision point that changed my career path was when I watched a skillful family physician, Paul Opsahl, MD, solve a complicated problem. It was in that moment that I realized that becoming a family physician was the right decision for me. I wanted to work those kinds of miracles, by taking all these disparate symptoms to try to solve the problem.
Each symptom becomes another piece of the puzzle; but when all the pieces are fitted together in the right way it can produce a beautiful picture. That is the beauty of family medicine; it’s the opportunity to use our skills from every discipline of medicine to deliver the most cost-effective quality medical care to our patients. Choosing to be a family physician is one the most fulfilling choices that can be made!
Share Your Family Medicine Story!
If you’d like to share your story, please email it to Communications Manager Morgan Pelt as a Word document along with at least 2 photos.
Please keep all submissions to no less than 200 words, but no more than 1,000 words, if possible. If you have a Twitter or Facebook account and would like for us to tag you, please provide that in your email as well.