Davis transplant wants to spend more time with patients and family
“They had me at hello,” said Dr. Michelle Kim, putting a twist on a line made famous in the movie “Jerry Maguire,” when referring to her meeting with Eastern Plumas Health Care District administrators.
“I couldn’t believe how welcoming everyone was,” Kim said, adding that she was awed by how committed the hospital’s CEO and board of directors were to finding a physician.
It’s Kim’s own commitment to her profession and her patients that drove her to leave her Sutter Health-affiliated practice in Davis and relocate to the Sierras.
“I was spending less and less of my time with patients, and spending it instead on e-mail, insurance and layer upon layer of reporting,” she said. She estimated that out of a 12- to 15-hour workday, she spent six hours with her patients. The rest was spent on paperwork or its online equivalent.
The incessant recordkeeping cut into her time with patients and with her family.
Kim and her husband, Ki, have been married for 20 years. They met while working at the Nut Tree in Vacaville when both were attending U.C. Davis. They have an 18-year-old daughter who is studying bioscience at U.C.-Irvine, and a 14-year-old son entering high school in the fall.
When Kim was an undergrad at Davis, she excelled in science, but wasn’t sure what to do after graduation. Her husband, who worked in finance, encouraged her to choose a career that would enable her to be self-sufficient should anything ever happen to him.
She chose nursing, but kept saying that if it weren’t for a variety of circumstances (including the fact that they already had a baby to care for), she would go to medical school.
“My husband finally said, ‘Put a cork in it and go to medical school.’” she recalled. At the time she was 26 and had a toddler.
She couldn’t believe her luck when U.C. Davis accepted her into its medical school, and the young family didn’t have to move. Their son was born while she was still in school. She felt equally lucky when it came time do her residency and she could stay in Davis.
“Someone must have been carving a path for me,” she said.
That path was made easier because of family that lived close by and a husband with a flexible work schedule. Still it wasn’t always easy juggling family and work.
In recent years, Kim has had even less time to spend with her family and that concerns her. She remembers fondly her own upbringing when holidays and special occasions were spent with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.
“Family just doesn’t happen; it takes work,” she said. “My kids won’t have what I had unless we put the time in.”
A turning point for Kim came when she attended her grandfather’s funeral, but felt distracted by work pressures.
It was during the gathering after the service, that her father mentioned a family home at Donner Lake and asked if anyone wanted to use it.
It seemed like the perfect solution for Kim and her husband who had been scouring rural communities looking for potential relocation sites. The family enjoys skiing, hiking and biking – virtually all outdoor sports – and had been seeking an area near lakes and mountains.
For the immediate future, the family will live in Truckee and Kim will commute to work. Their Davis home is already on the market.
“Eventually we hope to purchase something in the area so that we can use it as a getaway and I can spend some nights here,” Kim said.
Although the Kim family might move to the area full-time, she values some separation between her work and personal life
After attending undergrad and medical school at U.C. Davis and being a family practice physician in that community for 11 years, Kim often sees her patients around town.
“I love the connection; I almost feel like they’re part of my family,” she said, and noted that she has come to know generations within families and is invited to their milestone celebrations, but sometimes she craves a little anonymity.
She said that it has been difficult saying goodbye to her patients, though she knows that she is leaving them in good hands. “The disassembly of my practice has been one of the hardest things I have had to do,” Kim said. “It’s been a trail of tears. But there is a surplus of good physicians in Davis.”
Kim’s last day in her Davis office will be June 15 and her first day at the Portola clinic will be Aug. 6.
During the interim, she plans to hike Mt. Whitney at her son’s request, celebrate her sister’s 30th birthday in Las Vegas, and take a family vacation to Hawaii.
Then it will be on to the next phase of her career. “I’m super excited,” she said. “I’m reclaiming what I really wanted to do in medicine.”
When it came time to decide whether she should take the job in Portola, her husband began calculating.
“He figured that we would have a 22 percent increase in family time,” she said.
With more time to spend with family and patients, the decision was easy.
“It feels really good to be excited about medicine again,” Kim said.
Tom Hayes, the CEO of Eastern Plumas Health Care, is equally enthusiastic.
“It will be really nice to have someone like her coming up here,” he said. “I think patients will gravitate toward her.”
Many thanks to Debra Moore, Staff Writer, Portola Reporter
dmoore@plumasnews.com