Senior vice president of advocacy and policy counsel
South Carolina Medical Association
Please share advice you would give as a mentor to women new to the health field.
My advice to a young women entering the health field would be the same as to a young woman entering any other other field. You are uniquely gifted with a skill set that is meant to be used to benefit others. Know yourself well enough to identify those gifts, hold your head high with assurance that you deserve to be there and show up every day grateful to have been given something to offer others.
What routines and habits help you prepare for, or recover from, a day’s challenges?
My faith is the thing that sustains me through all life’s challenges, and the joy of coming home to my husband and children puts all of work’s challenges into perspective.
If you could change one thing about health care, what would it be?
I would reverse the trend of the corporatization of medicine in our country. In its best and most simple form, health care is about the intimate relationship shared between physicians/health care professionals and patients. Corporate systems and structures should be designed to support, not impede or control, this relationship. Unfortunately for health care professionals and the patients they serve, we seem to have lost sight of that.
