Health & Fitness: Finding fulfillment in family medicine

Elizabeth Dupic with a person of her young patients. Photograph courtesy of Buena Vista Regional Professional medical Centre

Elizabeth Dupic’s goal was usually to observe family medication in a little town – like her father and sister prior to her. Right after she graduated from the College of Iowa, she uncovered a perfect in shape in Storm Lake.

By EMILY NELSON

Elizabeth Dupic spent the summer season in between her 1st and second decades of medical college at a well being treatment centre in Manchester. She returned for a rotation all through her 3rd year and all over again for a 4-7 days elective through her fourth calendar year.

“I was in on the shipping and delivery of a newborn my very first time, and then I bought to see that baby as a a few-yr-old when I was a fourth-calendar year student,” Dupic suggests. “Experiencing that form of continuity of care was neat, and it gave me a taste of what it would be like in the foreseeable future.”

It was specifically the style of expertise that the long term loved ones medicine health practitioner from Clarion was wanting for when she started out at the University of Iowa Carver Faculty of Medicine.

Dupic graduated from Iowa in 2016 and now will work at Buena Vista Regional Clinical Heart in Storm Lake.

Father and sister also health professionals

Relatives medicine operates in the household. Her father, Jon Ahrendsen, and her more mature sister, Andrea McLoughlin, the two practice in their hometown of Clarion. They also had been Hawkeyes, with Ahrendsen graduating with his undergraduate diploma in 1978 and health care diploma in 1982, and McLoughlin with her professional medical diploma in 2013.

Ahrendsen claims he’s proud that his daughters adopted in his footsteps – both of those in medication and practicing in a rural spot.

“I imagine that they come to feel like they experienced a fantastic knowledge increasing up in a compact city,” Ahrendsen says. “I didn’t do anything at all to press them into individuals conclusions. They created them them selves.”

Dupic states she required to be some kind of medical doctor for as prolonged as she could remember. In middle college, it was a kid psychiatrist.

“Growing up looking at my father follow and viewing the regard that individuals had for him in the local community was a major deal for me,” Dupic suggests.

Moving to Storm Lake in 2019 was a homecoming of sorts for Dupic. She received her undergraduate diploma in biology from Buena Vista College, where by she also played basketball for a 12 months and ran observe for four yrs.

Iowa was Dupic’s very first option for healthcare faculty. Alongside with the advantage of in-condition tuition, she states she appreciated the alternatives Iowa offered to prepare in rural health and fitness care and the capacity to do her rotations in the condition, exactly where she prepared to follow right after graduation.

Just after becoming waitlisted, Dupic spent the year aiding the immigrant population in Storm Lake navigate the wellness care program and educating English.

Dupic suggests two ordeals in particular stand out about her time at the Carver School of Medication. The first was participating in the Health-related Education and learning Local community Orientation (MECO), which sends health care pupils to communities throughout Iowa for the summer months amongst their to start with and next yrs. There, they are launched to the scope of health and fitness treatment in the local community the way in which it contributes to the composition and functionality of the group and the cultural, political, economic and environmental determinants of overall health in the local community.

For the duration of her fourth calendar year, Dupic worked for 9 months in a continuity-of-treatment clinic at College of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics.

“It permitted me to practice what it would be like to deal with my have client panel,” Dupic suggests.

Dupic suggests she usually planned to follow in a rural place right after graduation.

Elizabeth Dupic and her spouse Kyle Dupic, met as undergraduate students at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake. Right after Elizabeth acquired her clinical degree, they had been satisfied to return to Storm Lake with their youngsters, Elise, Luther and Beatrice. Not pictured is their youngest, Delia. Kyle is the Alta-Aurelia High College baseball coach. Photo by Carol Dupic

“I liked residing in a rural neighborhood and so, partly, that is what I needed for myself and my spouse and children,” Dupic claims. “But I also saw, growing up and then later working with family members in Storm Lake, how helpful it was to have good, substantial-excellent medical professionals in communities like those, and I desired to assistance fill that hole.”

As for practicing spouse and children drugs, that was an simple selection.

“You get to care for total families and help them via the transitions of existence. It’s cradle-to-grave drugs,” Dupic states. “I also was wanting forward to the assortment of treatment I’d get to provide. I have anything unique walk in the doorway just about every working day. You never ever know what you’re heading to see.”

Dupics are both Beavers

She and her husband, Kyle Dupic, achieved at Buena Vista College, and both equally had been delighted to return to Storm Lake.

“I like that it’s a rural farming group that also has a huge immigrant inhabitants,” Dupic states. “So, there is a good deal of wide variety in the persons, and that was a single of the items that I was on the lookout for. Additionally, it helps make for definitely very good dining establishments. We have acquired some of the best Thai foodstuff in the state in this article.”

“I get to apply whole-spectrum family medicine,” Dupic suggests. “In some locations, the family health professionals are only outpatient and they really don’t do OB. But I get to do it all. I get to see my sufferers in the hospital and deliver infants. It’s a best stability of controlling a broad wide variety of individual issues and having aid from nearby professionals.”