Health & Fitness: Finding fulfillment in family medicine
Elizabeth Dupic with a single of her younger people. Photograph courtesy of Buena Vista Regional Health care Middle
Elizabeth Dupic’s goal was usually to follow relatives medicine in a small town – like her father and sister in advance of her. Immediately after she graduated from the College of Iowa, she found a excellent in shape in Storm Lake.
By EMILY NELSON
Elizabeth Dupic expended the summer among her initially and second years of health-related school at a health treatment center in Manchester. She returned for a rotation in the course of her third 12 months and again for a four-7 days elective all through her fourth year.
“I was in on the shipping and delivery of a infant my initial time, and then I bought to see that newborn as a a few-yr-outdated when I was a fourth-yr university student,” Dupic states. “Experiencing that sort of continuity of treatment was neat, and it gave me a flavor of what it would be like in the future.”
It was accurately the type of working experience that the long term family drugs health practitioner from Clarion was on the lookout for when she started at the University of Iowa Carver University of Medicine.
Dupic graduated from Iowa in 2016 and now functions at Buena Vista Regional Professional medical Center in Storm Lake.
Dad and sister also medical professionals
Family members medication runs in the family. Her father, Jon Ahrendsen, and her more mature sister, Andrea McLoughlin, both equally practice in their hometown of Clarion. They also were being Hawkeyes, with Ahrendsen graduating with his undergraduate degree in 1978 and health care diploma in 1982, and McLoughlin with her professional medical diploma in 2013.
Ahrendsen states he’s very pleased that his daughters adopted in his footsteps – both equally in drugs and practising in a rural space.
“I think that they sense like they had a excellent practical experience rising up in a small city,” Ahrendsen suggests. “I did not do anything to thrust them into people conclusions. They designed them by themselves.”
Dupic states she needed to be some type of physician for as extended as she could recall. In middle college, it was a little one psychiatrist.
“Growing up seeing my father observe and looking at the regard that people had for him in the group was a major deal for me,” Dupic states.
Transferring to Storm Lake in 2019 was a homecoming of kinds for Dupic. She obtained her undergraduate degree in biology from Buena Vista College, where she also played basketball for a yr and ran track for four years.
Iowa was Dupic’s 1st option for health care university. Alongside with the benefit of in-point out tuition, she suggests she appreciated the options Iowa presented to practice in rural health care and the means to do her rotations in the condition, in which she planned to follow after graduation.
Following staying waitlisted, Dupic invested the yr encouraging the immigrant population in Storm Lake navigate the wellbeing care technique and instructing English.
Dupic claims two experiences specially stand out about her time at the Carver University of Drugs. The initial was taking part in the Professional medical Training Community Orientation (MECO), which sends clinical pupils to communities across Iowa for the summertime among their 1st and next years. There, they are released to the scope of overall health treatment in the neighborhood the way in which it contributes to the construction and function of the group and the cultural, political, economic and environmental determinants of health and fitness in the local community.
During her fourth calendar year, Dupic labored for 9 months in a continuity-of-care clinic at College of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics.
“It permitted me to observe what it would be like to take care of my individual affected person panel,” Dupic states.
Dupic suggests she often planned to follow in a rural place right after graduation.
Elizabeth Dupic and her husband Kyle Dupic, fulfilled as undergraduate college students at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake. Soon after Elizabeth gained her medical diploma, they have been content to return to Storm Lake with their youngsters, Elise, Luther and Beatrice. Not pictured is their youngest, Delia. Kyle is the Alta-Aurelia High School baseball coach. Photo by Carol Dupic
“I preferred dwelling in a rural local community and so, partly, that is what I needed for myself and my family members,” Dupic says. “But I also saw, increasing up and then later on performing with households in Storm Lake, how useful it was to have superior, significant-good quality doctors in communities like those people, and I required to support fill that gap.”
As for practising spouse and children medication, that was an uncomplicated determination.
“You get to care for whole households and support them by way of the transitions of lifestyle. It’s cradle-to-grave medicine,” Dupic suggests. “I also was hunting ahead to the assortment of care I’d get to give. I have a little something distinct stroll in the doorway every single working day. You never know what you’re likely to see.”
Dupics are both equally Beavers
She and her spouse, Kyle Dupic, satisfied at Buena Vista University, and each were being joyful to return to Storm Lake.
“I like that it’s a rural farming neighborhood that also has a huge immigrant population,” Dupic says. “So, there’s a ton of range in the persons, and that was 1 of the matters that I was looking for. Moreover, it tends to make for genuinely fantastic dining places. We have got some of the greatest Thai foods in the condition in this article.”
“I get to practice comprehensive-spectrum loved ones drugs,” Dupic claims. “In some places, the relatives health professionals are only outpatient and they don’t do OB. But I get to do it all. I get to see my sufferers in the clinic and supply toddlers. It’s a ideal stability of managing a extensive selection of client troubles and obtaining aid from close by specialists.”