THE NORTH CAROLINA
NATIONAL Awards & Recognition
Success in Family Medicine Comes
FULL CIRCLE Concord’s Dr. Maureen Murphy Named National Family Physician of the Year
N
ear the end of September, Dr. Maureen Murphy of Concord, NC, received the AAFP’s most prestigious award when she was named national Family Physician of the Year. The award is just the latest recognition of Dr. Murphy’s lifelong work as one of North Carolina’s leading family physicians, making her not only a state standout, but clearly a national one too! In many ways, Dr. Murphy is representative of the thousands of great North Carolina family physicians who blazed the trail before her. She was extraordinarily honored to have been selected. “The first thing I thought was: ‘How can I possibly compare to Dr. Seaborn Blair?’” explained Dr. Murphy, complete with a look of shock and amazement across her face, to be sure. Dr. J. Seaborn Blair, Jr., of Wallace, NC, was a highly respected rural family physician who received the award in 1988. In her acceptance speech – in front of several thousand family physicians in Denver - Dr. Murphy recalled seeing Dr. Blair accept the award after being escorted down the aisle by his two family physician sons. It was a vision that stuck
16
THE NORTH CAROLINA FAMILY PHYSICIAN • Autumn 2015
2016 AAFP Family Physician o
from AAFP Executive Vice Presiden