Davis transplant wants to spend more time with patients and family
\n\u201cThey had me at hello,\u201d said Dr. Michelle Kim, putting a twist on a line made famous in the movie \u201cJerry Maguire,\u201d when referring to her meeting with Eastern Plumas Health Care District administrators.
\n\t\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe how welcoming everyone was,\u201d Kim said, adding that she was awed by how committed the hospital\u2019s CEO and board of directors were to finding a physician.
\n\tIt\u2019s Kim\u2019s 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.
\n\t\u201cI was spending less and less of my time with patients, and spending it instead on e-mail, insurance and layer upon layer of reporting,\u201d 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.
\n\tThe incessant recordkeeping cut into her time with patients and with her family.
\n\tKim 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.
\n\tWhen Kim was an undergrad at Davis, she excelled in science, but wasn\u2019t 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.
\n\tShe chose nursing, but kept saying that if it weren\u2019t for a variety of circumstances (including the fact that they already had a baby to care for), she would go to medical school.
\n\t\u201cMy husband finally said, \u2018Put a cork in it and go to medical school.\u2019\u201d she recalled. At the time she was 26 and had a toddler.
\n\tShe couldn\u2019t believe her luck when U.C. Davis accepted her into its medical school, and the young family didn\u2019t 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.
\n\t\u201cSomeone must have been carving a path for me,\u201d she said.
\n\tThat path was made easier because of family that lived close by and a husband with a flexible work schedule. Still it wasn\u2019t always easy juggling family and work.
\n\tIn 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.
\n\t\u201cFamily just doesn\u2019t happen; it takes work,\u201d she said. \u201cMy kids won\u2019t have what I had unless we put the time in.\u201d
\n\tA turning point for Kim came when she attended her grandfather\u2019s funeral, but felt distracted by work pressures.
\n\tIt 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.
\n\tIt 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 \u2013 virtually all outdoor sports \u2013 and had been seeking an area near lakes and mountains.
\n\tFor the immediate future, the family will live in Truckee and Kim will commute to work. Their Davis home is already on the market.
\n\t\u201cEventually we hope to purchase something in the area so that we can use it as a getaway and I can spend some nights here,\u201d Kim said.
\n\tAlthough the Kim family might move to the area full-time, she values some separation between her work and personal life
\n\tAfter 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.
\n\t\u201cI love the connection; I almost feel like they\u2019re part of my family,\u201d 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.
\n\tShe said that it has been difficult saying goodbye to her patients, though she knows that she is leaving them in good hands. \u201cThe disassembly of my practice has been one of the hardest things I have had to do,\u201d Kim said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a trail of tears. But there is a surplus of good physicians in Davis.\u201d
\n\tKim\u2019s last day in her Davis office will be June 15 and her first day at the Portola clinic will be Aug. 6.
\n\tDuring the interim, she plans to hike Mt. Whitney at her son\u2019s request, celebrate her sister\u2019s 30th birthday in Las Vegas, and take a family vacation to Hawaii.
\n\tThen it will be on to the next phase of her career. \u201cI\u2019m super excited,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m reclaiming what I really wanted to do in medicine.\u201d
\n\tWhen it came time to decide whether she should take the job in Portola, her husband began calculating.
\n\t\u201cHe figured that we would have a 22 percent increase in family time,\u201d she said.
\n\tWith more time to spend with family and patients, the decision was easy.
\n\t\u201cIt feels really good to be excited about medicine again,\u201d Kim said.
\n\tTom Hayes, the CEO of Eastern Plumas Health Care, is equally enthusiastic.
\n\t\u201cIt will be really nice to have someone like her coming up here,\u201d he said. \u201cI think patients will gravitate toward her.\u201d
\nMany thanks to Debra Moore, Staff Writer, Portola Reporter
\ndmoore@plumasnews.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Davis transplant wants to spend more time with patients and family \u201cThey had me at hello,\u201d said Dr. Michelle Kim, putting a twist on a line made famous in the movie \u201cJerry Maguire,\u201d when referring to her meeting with Eastern Plumas Health Care District administrators. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe how welcoming everyone was,\u201d Kim said, adding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ephc.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}