AROUND THE STATE
NORTHEAST OHIO
Personalities
Teaching for Tomorrow
Cleveland physician recognizes the importance of mentoring future doctors By Jenny Wise
You might expect a medical mentor to be someone who knew, from day one, that he or she was bound for the field.
But the students benefiting from the knowledge of Dr. Charles Garven are learning from someone who, for a long time, didn’t want to go into medicine – and, now that he’s practicing it, can speak in-depth on the appeal and importance of helping people. Setting out on a different path For Dr. Charles Garven, medicine was a field he long knew he didn’t want to pursue. Garven may have been raised by a doctor, but the Cleveland native packed his bags for Marquette University in 2003 with no intention of following in his father’s footsteps. “I thought I would always end up doing something different than medicine,” says Garven. “Science, initially, was always something I thought I was capable of. But I enjoyed the stories of why people do what they do; things that history focused on.” As a history major, Garven started getting involved with a group of students at Marquette who were planning medical service trips to Honduras. He began to realize there were stories to be heard in medicine and history alike. “I fell in love with the work and, during my time in undergrad, was a part 18
HealthScene Ohio
Dr. Chad Garven works closely with Neighborhood Family Practice’s electronic records system, EPIC.
of developing an organization called Global Brigades,” says Garven. “I grew to love medicine in its ability to manage not just a cough or a rash, but deal with the patient’s whole story – what brought them to the office that day, what their families are like, why they make certain health decisions.” And just like that, Garven changed the course of his life and career. He would go on to attend medical school at Wright State University, while simultaneously earning his master of public health degree. After completing his family medicine residency at the Medical University of South Carolina in 2015, Garven
returned to Cleveland with his wife, Bridget, to work at the Tremont location of Neighborhood Family Practice (NFP). An incredible wealth of knowledge Garven fills many roles at NFP. First and foremost, he is a full-time clinical physician who sees patients every day. He also works closely with EPIC, the electronic records service that NFP utilizes, in the Provider Builder program. “(This) is a program that puts providers through some of the back-end training that EPIC requires its technical support people to go through, (which) allows providers and tech support to use the same www.healthsceneohio.com