Known for:

My husband [Kenneth Wilson, MD, chief of infectious diseases at the Durham VA Hospital] and I usually have the team over for dinner at the end of rotations.

Why Duke?

I think Duke is one of the best schools in the country and the world. It’s in a beautiful and unique area, it offers a lot of resources for students to draw upon, and it encourages them to explore medicine from a lot of different angles.

Why gastroenterology?

I find GI medicine a fascinating combination of procedures, diagnosis, and treatment. It's highly rewarding to take care of so many patients and to make a difference in their lives.

What she enjoys most about teaching

I enjoy the inquisitiveness of my students—in the act of teaching them, I learn more. I also enjoy taking the time to explain things fully to students, to show personal interest in their growth, and to teach them compassion and respect for patients by demonstrating those qualities in my own patient interactions.

On what makes a medical student successful

A medical student needs to have a strong commitment to excellence, certainly; but that alone is not enough. They also need enthusiasm and real compassion for people and the problems they face.

What prospective students should know about a medical school—and themselves

They need to know they'll get an excellent education and be exposed to state-of-the-art medicine, that there are people willing to devote time to help them. They also need to know that they’ll have to take the initiative to get the most out of any program.

On helping students see the trees first, then the forest

When you’re getting information from a patient, you need to put it in the context of a story. I frequently tell house staff that taking a medical history is like any other news story: get the “what, when, and where”—all the data you can—and then use your specialized knowledge to figure out the "why." But there’s a balance there—it’s important for students to focus not exclusively on data, but on the patients as people.

Why both the end and the beginning justify medical means

When a patient comes in with end stage disease, it didn’t start yesterday or last week, but five, 10, or 20 years ago. If you’re going to have real impact on people’s lives, you can't wait for them to come to you in the end stages—at that point, tertiary medical care might just be an exercise in futility. One of our major goals as physicians should be to get patients in for regular screenings and educate them in basic preventive care so that we can have a bigger impact on their health. Even students who want to be surgeons should be able to step back from their procedural orientation and have a broader perspective.