(SitNews) Ketchikan, Alaska - Stacey Schmidt MD began her Alaska practice at PeaceHealth Medical Group Pediatrics in early April afer years of experience as a Pediatric Emergency Room Physician at the North Central Baptist Pediatric Center in San Antonio, Texas.

She was also a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center where she taught nurses and medical students about the care of children in emergency situations. It was there she did her residency.

Medicine is a calling for Dr. Schmidt. “It’s half art,” she said. “It’s how we make connections to our patients.” Afer years of Emergency Department work she said she’s looking forward to building those connections, “I want to be able to follow my patients and advocate for them as they grow.”

Dr. Schmidt knows how to tell a good story and the one about how she got here is wonderful.

She and a friend were on an Alaskan cruise in summer 2013. They decided to take a fishing excursion. They were fishing for fish but that wasn’t all she caught. “I walked down the dock,” she said, “and there he was.”

Brian Rigneisen is skipper of the charter boat Sierra Dawn. They laughed and talked the whole time and then she went home to Texas. A few months later she wrote him a note. He wrote back. One thing led to another, as things sometimes do, and they married in late spring last year.

Dr. Schmidt received her undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska and attended medical school there as well. She has a long list of interests including playing the flute, cooking, gardening, and unsurprisingly, fishing.

PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center, a 25-bed Critical Access Hospital, is also a Level IV Trauma Center for an area roughly twice the size of Massachusetts. Key services include general and orthopedic surgery, and primary care, women’s health, pediatric, and behavioral health clinics. The Medical Center also has a 29-bed long-term care unit. Visit us online at peacehealth.org.

Editing by Mary Kauffman, SitNews

Source of News:

PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center
www.peacehealth.org/ketchikan

About PeaceHealth: Based in Vancouver, Wash., PeaceHealth is a not-for-profi t Catholic health system offering care to communities in Washington, Oregon and Alaska. In 1890, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace founded what has become PeaceHealth.

 

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