Welcome to Briarvista Pediatrics!
So glad you’ve found our website, and hopefully that means you’ve also found our office. Please be sure to contact the office if you need more information about our location, hours, services, insurance contracts, or anything else.
I chose to open my own practice so that I can provide the kind of medical care to my patients that I want to receive as a parent. That means access to the doctor – and you’ll see here that we’ve adopted a variety of easy ways to reach our office. I’m also guaranteeing same day appointments and same day responses – check out the office policies. And don’t worry, although the office is closed on weekends I haven’t forgotten how hard it is to be a working parent – schedule your child’s next check-up during one of our “Well Check Wednesday” evening sessions!
I often get asked about my training/background and how that changes the way I practice medicine. As you’ll see in my bio, not only did I complete a primary care pediatrics residency, I then spent two additional years in a fellowship focused on academic medicine. What does that mean? During those extra years, I took advance coursework in medical statistics and spent a lot of time teaching medical students and residents. Although I don’t do much with Kaplan-Meir curves these days, what this means to you is that I understand how to interpret the data. When a new study comes out identifying a risk factor for autism or a better treatment model for ear infections, I can take apart the numbers and fully understand the clinical implications. In other words, I can practice evidence-based medicine without worrying if I might be misinterpreting the information.
The years I spent teaching help me better relay these findings to my patients and/or their parents. I like to break down the evidence into easy to understand tidbits and use real-world metaphors and analogies whenever possible. And when the evidence is beyond redoubt, I’ll make sure to relay that as well.
For example, I have zero concerns about the safety of vaccines but have personally seen the diseases that are vaccine-preventable and devastating. Most parents have not had first-hand experience with whooping cough, measles, or H. Flu meningitis. So you may need to simply trust me when I say that the diseases are scarier than the vaccines. That’s why our vaccine policy is so simple – if you cannot trust that as your child’s doctor, I only have his or her best interest in mind, then this practice is unlikely to be a good fit for you. (Don’t worry, I’ll be blogging more about specific vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases at a later date.)
So be sure to watch this space for exciting features in the coming months (and years). And if you have any specific questions or topics you’d like to see covered here, please let me know. Can’t wait to see you in the office soon!