2019 PAFP AWARD WINNERS CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE IN FAMILY MEDICINE For more, visit: www.pafp.com
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Co-Exemplary Teacher of the Year
ALLISON MYERS, MD IN HER OWN WORDS
ALLISON MYERS, MD, WINNER OF THE PAFP’S EXEMPLARY TEACHER OF THE YEAR AWARD, SPOKE WITH KEYSTONE PHYSICIAN ABOUT THE WIDE SCOPE OF FAMILY MEDICINE AND THE UNDERSERVED LGBT POPULATION. think like most of us in family medicine, I didn’t want to give anything up, and wanted to see people of all genders and ages. I was really torn between my love of women’s health and OB, and also doing procedures – inpatient, outpatient, all the things. When I finished residency and became an attending, I had the opportunity to do my family medicine dream job, which was basically doing all the things. I’m still able to see all my patients in an outpatient setting, and for me that includes building up an LGBT practice and seeing lots of transgender patients and doing procedures, being on our inpatient service, and I’m on our OB faculty so I still get the joy of delivering babies and doing prenatal care. I think [teaching medicine is] the part that really energizes me. We all have those parts 24
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KEYSTONE PHYSICIAN
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SUMMER 2019
of our job that can be, you know, draining. But the teaching part is really energizing because you get to go back to when you were a learner and remember what brought you so much joy about medicine, whether it’s seeing something for the first time or doing something for the first time, or making a meaningful connection with a patient, so being able to work with learners – it not only directly brings me joy, but it also reminds me of the reason that I am doing this job. I’ve always felt passionately about, and felt passionately about teaching [LGBT health]. It’s something I didn’t get very much formal teaching about when I was a student, so I had to do a lot of seeking out my own education. So when I was in a position to be able teach others, I really wanted to be able to extend peo-