Promoting Primary Care
Colleague Interview: A Conversation with Renee Crichlow, MD
R
enee Crichlow, MD, FAAFP, is the Director of Advocacy and Policy and Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota School of Medicine, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. She serves as faculty on the North Memorial Family Medicine Residency Program. Dr. Crichlow is board certified in Family Medicine and is currently the President of the Minnesota Academy of Family Practice.
This Interview has been edited for clarity and length.
When did you decide to train in Family Medicine?
Please tell me about yourself.
When I went to medical school, I remember being on campus the first day and someone asked me, what do you want to go into when you graduate? “I want to be a doctor; I want to take care of people.” Like, what specialty? “Doctor. A doctor who takes care of people.” Well, then you probably want to be a Family Medicine doctor. “OK, then I want to be a Family Medicine doc.” I really love taking care of people their whole life — a grandma and her grandchildren. I love babies and delivering babies. I love hospital work and sitting down in the outpatient clinic with my patients that I’ve known forever. I love the continuity and comprehensiveness and I love the opportunity to be involved in people’s life choices for their whole life. I really enjoyed my third year of medical school and every rotation told me that I should go into that specialty. I just nodded and said, thank you, I appreciate it, but I like taking care of all the people and not having to let them go. If I can’t treat what they need at that moment, I can take care of the rest of them. And, I love translating for my patients. When I refer them to a specialist that they need to see, they come back to me to convey what the specialist is trying to say to them. I love not letting them go. I love walking into a room and patients say: “you delivered my grandbaby.” I’ve seen their kids — I’ve been here for 10 years and I’m seeing kids that weren’t even walking. I also love taking care of end-of-life issues. You get to be there
I grew up in Oklahoma, went to medical school in California and did a residency in Family Medicine at UC Davis and then was hired on as faculty with joint appointment in Family Medicine and OB/GYN. I was there for a few years but always wanted to live in Montana. Once I learned there was a residency training program in Montana I called them and we agreed that I should work there. I lived in a town called Red Lodge, Montana that had about 2,500 people. Our residency was in an FQHC (Federally Qualified Health Center) and we had several different sites around the county. I had my son there. But, for family reasons, we moved to Minneapolis. I had an opportunity to check out North Memorial’s Residency Program and found that it had all the aspects that I really loved about UC Davis — a really strong Family Medicine Department and also a really strong community-based hospital, which is what I really loved about Montana. North Memorial has an amazing environment for teaching as we have a large availability of patients, a variety of acuity and we get to serve our community in the clinic, the hospital and out in the community. I think that is a really great way to train residents because so much of what causes people problems is outside of the exam room. 10
March/April 2020
MetroDoctors
The Journal of the Twin Cities Medical Society
