 Sept. 30 - Oct. 1, 2003 |
| ASSEMBLY EDITION • NEW ORLEANS |
BY J. MICHAEL BRODIE
 Eric Ossowski, M.D., dispenses equal parts compassionate care, community involvement and administrative leadership in his practice. |
Eric Ossowski, M.D., of Scottsdale, Ariz., will be acclaimed AAFP's 2004 Family Physician of the Year during the Scientific Assembly opening ceremony Oct. 2 in New Orleans.
As chief of family and primary care medicine and acting chief of internal medicine for the Phoenix Indian Medical Center, Ossowski has garnered a reputation for dispensing equal parts compassionate care, community involvement and administrative leadership.
Ossowski says his patients face health challenges such as diabetes; obesity; hypertension; and heart, liver and kidney disorders. "There are a lot of serious health problems here," he says. "Some tribes here have as much as 50 percent of the adults diagnosed with diabetes."
Ossowski helped develop the geriatrics program and smoking cessation program at the medical center, which serves more than 39 tribes in the Southwest. He has participated in Tar Wars® programs organized by the Arizona AFP in public and parochial schools and belongs to Arizonans Concerned About Smoking & Chewing Inc. Tar Wars is the AAFP's tobacco-free education program for youth.
Over the past 23 years, Ossowski's patients have taught him some valuable lessons. "I learned to listen closely to my patients," he says. "They know what's wrong, and if you ask them, they will tell you."
Ossowski discovered the role culture and perception play in patient care when the first few young children were brought into his office at an Indian Health Service reservation clinic in 1980. "These infants would come to the well-child clinic with hair that was sticky and matted," he recalls. "I thought, ‘Well, this isn't clean,' blaming poor hygiene. But that was not the case."
The parents had applied mesquite sap to the soft spot on each child's head, Ossowski soon learned. The elders believed it would protect an infant's health until the soft spot closed.
"The mother followed her culture but also came to me for Western medicine," he says. "She was trying to do what was right by both cultures."
Finalists for 2003 Family Physician of the YearKenneth Black, M.D., of Valparaiso, Ind. |
Ossowski went to medical school at the University of Minnesota/Duluth and the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He attended the Duluth Family Practice Residency. During residency, part of his training occurred in Alaska north of the Arctic Circle. "It was the experience of a lifetime," he says of his six-week rotation with the Indian Health Service in Kotzebue. "I was looking for a different cultural and medical experience. I thought, well, I've never been there before, so why not?"
Ossowski later was offered jobs with the IHS in Alaska and Arizona. He reflects, "I went from the freezer to the fryer!"
Ossowski began his IHS career in 1980 at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center, where he served as deputy chief of family and primary care medicine until 1988. He has worked at four IHS clinics in the Phoenix area and two rural South Dakota IHS sites. A captain with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, he has chaired the medical executive committee of the Phoenix center, one of the largest IHS facilities in the PHS.
Ossowski says he will end his career in Arizona, where he
met his wife and where they are raising their two children.
"I signed a
contract for two years and thought I'd go back to Minnesota," he says. "I never
did."
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Copyright © 2003
by American Academy of Family Physicians.