Health & Fitness: Finding fulfillment in family medicine

Elizabeth Dupic with just one of her youthful sufferers. Photograph courtesy of Buena Vista Regional Health care Center

Elizabeth Dupic’s target was always to exercise spouse and children medicine in a little city – like her father and sister before her. Just after she graduated from the College of Iowa, she observed a best in shape in Storm Lake.

By EMILY NELSON

Elizabeth Dupic used the summer involving her initially and second years of professional medical university at a health treatment centre in Manchester. She returned for a rotation throughout her 3rd calendar year and all over again for a four-7 days elective during her fourth calendar year.

“I was in on the shipping and delivery of a baby my initially time, and then I acquired to see that infant as a three-12 months-outdated when I was a fourth-12 months scholar,” Dupic states. “Experiencing that kind of continuity of treatment was neat, and it gave me a style of what it would be like in the long run.”

It was precisely the type of practical experience that the foreseeable future spouse and children medication doctor from Clarion was wanting for when she started off at the College of Iowa Carver College or university of Medication.

Dupic graduated from Iowa in 2016 and now operates at Buena Vista Regional Clinical Centre in Storm Lake.

Dad and sister also medical doctors

Loved ones medication operates in the family members. Her father, Jon Ahrendsen, and her older sister, Andrea McLoughlin, equally follow in their hometown of Clarion. They also were being Hawkeyes, with Ahrendsen graduating with his undergraduate diploma in 1978 and health-related diploma in 1982, and McLoughlin with her health-related degree in 2013.

Ahrendsen states he’s very pleased that his daughters adopted in his footsteps – both of those in medicine and practicing in a rural location.

“I consider that they experience like they experienced a superior practical experience expanding up in a smaller town,” Ahrendsen suggests. “I didn’t do something to thrust them into those selections. They designed them themselves.”

Dupic states she preferred to be some type of medical professional for as lengthy as she could remember. In center school, it was a baby psychiatrist.

“Growing up seeing my dad follow and looking at the regard that people today experienced for him in the neighborhood was a big offer for me,” Dupic says.

Moving to Storm Lake in 2019 was a homecoming of types for Dupic. She received her undergraduate diploma in biology from Buena Vista University, where by she also performed basketball for a calendar year and ran track for 4 decades.

Iowa was Dupic’s very first option for professional medical school. Together with the profit of in-condition tuition, she states she appreciated the possibilities Iowa presented to educate in rural well being treatment and the ability to do her rotations in the state, exactly where she prepared to practice after graduation.

After remaining waitlisted, Dupic invested the yr supporting the immigrant population in Storm Lake navigate the health and fitness treatment method and educating English.

Dupic suggests two ordeals in particular stand out about her time at the Carver College or university of Medicine. The to start with was taking part in the Clinical Schooling Local community Orientation (MECO), which sends clinical college students to communities throughout Iowa for the summertime in between their to start with and 2nd decades. There, they are released to the scope of well being treatment in the neighborhood the way in which it contributes to the framework and operate of the neighborhood and the cultural, political, economic and environmental determinants of health in the neighborhood.

Through her fourth calendar year, Dupic worked for nine months in a continuity-of-treatment clinic at University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics.

“It permitted me to exercise what it would be like to handle my very own patient panel,” Dupic claims.

Dupic says she often planned to practice in a rural region after graduation.

Elizabeth Dupic and her spouse Kyle Dupic, met as undergraduate college students at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake. Just after Elizabeth obtained her clinical diploma, they ended up pleased to return to Storm Lake with their small children, Elise, Luther and Beatrice. Not pictured is their youngest, Delia. Kyle is the Alta-Aurelia Superior School baseball mentor. Image by Carol Dupic

“I appreciated dwelling in a rural community and so, partly, that is what I desired for myself and my household,” Dupic states. “But I also noticed, developing up and then afterwards working with households in Storm Lake, how valuable it was to have great, higher-good quality physicians in communities like those people, and I desired to aid fill that hole.”

As for working towards relatives drugs, that was an simple choice.

“You get to treatment for full households and aid them as a result of the transitions of lifestyle. It’s cradle-to-grave medicine,” Dupic says. “I also was wanting forward to the variety of treatment I’d get to give. I have anything unique stroll in the door each individual day. You under no circumstances know what you’re going to see.”

Dupics are equally Beavers

She and her partner, Kyle Dupic, satisfied at Buena Vista College, and both equally had been happy to return to Storm Lake.

“I like that it is a rural farming neighborhood that also has a substantial immigrant inhabitants,” Dupic claims. “So, there’s a lot of selection in the persons, and that was 1 of the issues that I was on the lookout for. Furthermore, it tends to make for definitely excellent restaurants. We have received some of the very best Thai food stuff in the point out here.”

“I get to exercise total-spectrum family members medication,” Dupic says. “In some areas, the relatives medical doctors are only outpatient and they never do OB. But I get to do it all. I get to see my people in the hospital and produce infants. It is a great balance of handling a huge assortment of patient difficulties and getting help from nearby specialists.”