Integrating Faith And Medical Care

Very difficult well and my wedded thing that could lead this family policy matters. Focus on faith tradition with Thomas Grant Pastor each director for NC family.

Thank you for joining us for this week's focus on family policy motors. I'm excited to be joined by a native North girl of the dedicated his life to serve as has recently taken up brick leap of faith to practice medicine more fully in accord with his religious beliefs. Dr. Patrick O'Connell board certified in internal medicine physician is the founder of Sentinel primary care after completing medical school at UNC Chapel Hill. He trained at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center before returning to North Carolina and establishing himself as a well-liked primary care physician with Duke Hill in 2017. Dr. O'Connell left Duke to start his own practice that emphasizes the dignity of the individual person Dr. Patrick O'Connell. Welcome to family policy matter, sir. It's great to have you on the show Dr., your career has been so oriented toward service of others try to help our our audience understand how your heart became so service oriented to highlight reel so you know I would Yonge and adolescence and natural personality is time and I'm a rule follower and very beautiful.

Like you, am supposed to and so interesting that I never went through a rebellion phase either either parent or towards my faith by the same token, it's not like a crew with with a personally very vibrant, but interestingly, when I got to college, which I think, unfortunately, is where a lot of people have difficulty. That's when my faith began to come alive and began to deepen and then as they then transitioned on to medical school. Jesus basically kicked in the front door.

I want you and really grew through the medical school years and you know which is a good time for that to be happening is medical school with this cauldron of formation but came out of medical school with with a very strong faith very much in love with you and then you know the more that I got to know him and the more that I went into my faith.

The more that I was drawn, drawn to two live out my faith to to make it active in my life in a quick overview. That's where my growth and path to where I am now, thank you for sure that I'm sure listeners really appreciate the part of your story you heard us say God didn't call me to get rich. God called me to be a primary care doctor and take care of people to be true for the I just love that when when did you know you wanted to be a doctor or cool or perhaps what inspired you yet… What you'd expect, that I wanted to be a doctor late in the third year of medical school. Yeah so it's very funny. I went to medical school because I was drawn by the science of it. You know that this sort of detective work of figuring out a medical problem or coming up with a creative way to treat a medical issue that the risen is all incredibly, intellectually stimulating, and that's what drew me in.

But that's not what's happening there when I got to medical school and go and deepening my relationship with God. I had a big crisis for the first time in my life that is very strong feeling the strong, not even feeling the knowledge that God wants me to do something for him with my life and I don't know what it is but here I am a medical school pouring every waking hour into training myself to go down this path run but I'm happy want me to go down. I may be doing the wrong thing, but had never really tackled this question with this level of seriousness before so I had a big crisis when I was in medical school thing I Lord you want me to do something you just tell me what it is but but you need it is good. I don't know. So I actually was setting up to take time off for medical school to try to figure this question out. But then at the very end of my third year right before the Euros started I worked with a family physician in the foothills of North Carolina document Mark McMahon and when I worked with him and he also as Christians we could sort of sharing our faith.

I could talk about what I was thinking about when I saw him in the way that he took care of the people that he was the primary care doctor for I recognize exactly what I wanted to do and I recognize in his example what God is calling me needed. So he's the one who was a role model. I saw the way he would interact with patient and and really care about what was going on with not just you know, treat their diabetes or treat arthritis, but he would just doing those things and then say so how are things how you do well in any care what the answer was seeing.

I recognize immediately that the science and that's it.

Serving the people that that would get to take care, that's terrific and how good God to bring your past together with this other doctor and let you see the model before you a way to approach people with needs goes far beyond just taking care of your prescriptions and so forth. But look deeper into their lives.

I know that this must make for some very interesting interaction with with you and your patients. How is your faith infused into the way that you interact with patients. Yeah, explicit way and maybe maybe an implicit way that explicit apartments spiritually. I'm an introvert so I don't like and not drawn to pray often over with my patient that I do that in the past but it's not and I'm stepping out of my comfort zone but other ways you know with the practice here.

We start the day with prayer and each day we pray for the people that are on the schedule and we pray for people that were taking care of that we know are going through something difficult and you know I would say in sort of an implicit way is as I'm approaching taking care of people and doing it with this frame of mind that that I want to take care of the entire person not just their medical problem, not just here to fix the diabetes are here to address whatever the case may be running want to care of the whole person, so I want to know their family story when know what work is like for that I want to know. It's important so that partly so that I just feel connected when problems arise or issues arise and know how to approach this take to when issues arise that are often personal or mental health. The way that I try to give counsel. My approach with the Christian understanding of human nature looks good run the different ways that that connection to have your listening policy matters a resource to listen to our radio show online resources that will be a place of persuasion in your community website and see family.org Dr. O'Connell tell us about the unique model now that it becomes Sentinel primary care why did you decide to leave one of the biggest medical groups in the country to try this particular model so that the model I will say I stole the model myself. There were I came across an 8010 years ago there were two Christian doctors in California who were operating family practice and I think that they got tired of the treadmill of the typical practice in a converted their practice to have this this fascinating hybrid of a direct primary care model, meaning membership-based models of people would pay monthly membership and then that the doctors would would not charge the patient or the patient's insurance when they were coming for visit was all paid for using transfer labs or x-rays or whatever but not Dr. and they set aside a portion of the practice for people who didn't have any insurance and their practice because of its charitable work. I set it up as a nonprofit and as a Christian and I remember so a decade ago when I came across this I thought that's just fascinating. So when I was considering making this step of opening my practice is immediately the model that went to play when research what effect did they do and that we created here and so that the couple of highlights of the model of Sentinel also are the reasons that I left the traditional medical setting, so, so it's a direct primary care practice elaborate on a membership fee rather than billing people and set aside a portion of the practice for folks who are uninsured and care for them as well and the practice is a nonprofit charitable mission and so then this correspondingly, and that the Christian practice and so bogglingly the two things that were really the pillars of why I left you to come open Sentinel.

One of them is is another common frustration both on the doctor side and on the patient's that time pressures and financial pressures in healthcare where everybody has to run as fast as they can all the time and have very short possible people in and out all driven by the financial pressures that know that for me was very difficult because if I rushed I couldn't take care people the way that God would have called me to do with them. I was an hour behind schedule. Easy for very maddening with time so that was one part that was difficult. The other part is the increasing difficulty within healthcare of being faithfully Christian in the way that you practice medicine and the pressures to two.

Give in to compromise to capitulate to do things that I cannot in good conscience do for the people didn't care that I could look further down the road and say these pressures are growing and I think may become so great that I will not be employable and a standard medical setting those two things about the time pressures that made it very difficult to do primary care well and my insistence that must be faithful with it that you think that pushing them to take the leap of Dr. O'Connell during the end of our time together like to ask this question is advice do you have for your faithful Christians who want to get into the medical field but are concerned about how they can remain faithful in the face of difficult medical and even scientific situations were driven advice. I would say first is knowing that healthcare is becoming an increasingly difficult field for faithful Christian.

The first thing I would say is you think very seriously about whether this is what the Lord is calling you two were not the mascot you want me to do that I could have answered no then then don't ask, then do it. But if the answer is yes yes this is where I want you, then the two things I would say Juan is prepare form yourself, learn, educate yourself about the issues that are at the intersection between our faith and healthcare so all the Biologics issues and the second thing is put on your armor because it's going to be a fund to be run Road that's excluded vice O'Connell working her listeners go to learn more about your practice that sent Sentinel primary care and also to just stay on top of bioethics issues do you have a website I'm guessing that you do so. Sentinel primary care.com practice website or folks can just Google my name Patrick O'Connell, MD, Raleigh, author of oceangoing read much more about the practice. Learn more about the model and what we do for the bioethics issues. So for formation couple resources.

I would suggest wanted Christian medical and dental Association air website has a lot of resources on folks who are interested in knowing what's going on. There's there's a website or if they get the website you can sign up for an email notice bio and.org VI matters edition family to listen to our radio show online for more resources and information about issues and families in North Carolina were website and see family.org and follow us on Twitter and Facebook