Hooked on Primary Care with K. Allen Greiner, MD, MPH
I was uninterested in medicine until college and had little knowledge of different specialties. I did a plastic surgery rotation and almost got talked into that by the chair of the department. After he missed a scheduled appointment with me, I started thinking about community projects, mental health and HIV work I had seen family physicians engage in and I decided that I wanted variety and more of a population impact in my career. I was attracted to the intensity of working with patients in need of help with multiple physical and mental health problems, and I wanted to make an impact with families and under-resourced segments of my community. I felt at home working in safety-net clinics, where I saw family physician role models doing so much for so many patients at a much lower cost than what I saw happening in the hospitals where I had rotations. I wanted to be an advocate for patients and families, and I felt like I could empathize with their complicated lives. I wanted to have a diverse experience, I and feel like I was making a real valuable impact on the kinds of people who were not used to someone who would bend over backwards for them. Family medicine gave me that opportunity and still does over 2 decades later.
K. Allen Greiner, MD, MPH
Nason Family Endowed Professor and Vice Chair
Department of family medicine and community health
Component core lead, Community and Collaboration
Frontiers: Clinical and Translational Science Institute
University of Kansas Medical Center
Health officer, Unified Government Wyandotte County
Kansas Public Health Department, Kansas City