Volume 61, Number 3 - Summer 2010

 

By Deborah Donlon, MD

I still remember the journey, driving up Highway 99 to Fowler, a small farming community a few miles south of Fresno. The flatness of the landscape, the July heat, and the grapes and olives growing on every side form an indelible image in my mind. 

I had just finished my first year of medical school at UC San Diego and was headed north for a month of rural family medicine with two family physicians and their teenage daughters. When I arrived at their home, the first to greet me was Dr. Joan Rubinstein, who was baking bread. Then her husband, Dr. Alex Sherriffs, led me outside to their expansive garden and encouraged me to gather the vegetables we’d eat for dinner. Later, daughters Maggie and Sarah arrived home from their summer jobs and took me jogging around the high school track. Over the course of a few hours, the Rubinstein-Sherriffs family adopted me as one of their own.

I now work as a family physician at the Southwest Community Health Center in Santa Rosa and teach in the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency, where my colleagues include Dr. Lisa Ward and Dr. Douglas Jimenez. The three of us are in a group that delivers babies at Sutter Santa Rosa Medical Center. Recently, Lisa, Douglas and I discovered that we had a shared past: our earliest mentors in family medicine, Joan Rubinstein and Alex Sherriffs.

“It was the power of them inviting us into their home, and into their lives, in such a deep, intimate way,” recalls Lisa, who worked with Alex and Joan as a Model Fresno student during her third year of medical school at UC San Francisco. “I could see their balance between work and family, and be nurtured by them, because of how welcoming they were.” 

Douglas was Alex and Joan’s first Model Fresno student. He remembers, “I had a vision of growing most of the food that I eat, and they were my first examples of busy professionals who were doing that. I found their commitment to that way of living inspirational.”

Being part of the Rubinstein-Sherriffs family provided a window into the lives of rural family physicians. The entire family ate breakfast together at 7 a.m. Then Joan and Alex conducted morning hospital rounds in Selma, another small town south of Fowler. These morning rounds were followed by a full day of caring for patients in the office, evening rounds, and overnight call. 

Joan practiced OB, and Alex taught residents in his geriatrics clinic in Fresno. The scope of their practice was amazing; it seemed there was no clinical problem they could not solve. And each had a unique style. Douglas recalls, “Alex has this kinetic energy, down on the floor during a 2-year-old well-child visit, while Joan has a way that is calm, direct and open.” 

Lisa remembers Alex “bounding out of a patient’s room” to find her, thrilled to have a patient with a classic exam finding to teach his student. At another point, Lisa delivered a baby with Joan and was awed by the tranquility of the experience.

There is a certain clarity of memory that accompanies our early, intense experiences as physicians in training. First time in the operating room. First birth. First grave diagnosis. When these firsts are woven together for us by wise and compassionate teachers, the result is nothing short of transformative. We have a framework on which all future knowledge and experience can be added. 

Joan and Alex are the essence, the beauty, of family medicine. It would be impossible to be part of their world for a time and not be profoundly changed. Today, as my colleagues and I review applications for the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency, there is further evidence of Joan and Alex’s impact on students. There are essays and stories about time spent in Fowler: the community, the garden, the clinic, the hospital, and most of all, the inspiration.

In a reunion of sorts, the five of us were together this past winter at the first birthday party of Lisa’s daughter. Alex and Joan enjoyed time with our children and told stories of their daughters, who are beginning their own professional careers. 

“We’re happy that the three of you are here in Santa Rosa together to support and take care of each other,” Joan said, as she watched our kids blowing bubbles and chasing each other around the yard. I thought about all they had taught us, and wanting to make them proud. It’s good to be part of the family.