Dr. Kelly Fitzpatrick, orthopedic surgeon at UMC, grew up in a small town in Virginia and joined the military in 1999 seeking to become an infantry officer before finding his calling for medicine.
“I wanted to be an infantry officer first, and then changed my mind last minute and decided to be a doctor. I worked through UMC over the last couple of years, off and on, taking care of trauma patients, taking care of people that really need help,” Fitzpatrick said.
But Fitzpatrick could not quite decide what he wanted to do and thought maybe he wanted to be an emergency room physician or perhaps an endocrinologist at one point.
“But what really drove me to orthopedics is instant gratification, to be honest. Fix a broken bone, and you see the X ray, and you know you’ve done a good job [getting them] on their feet and moving again,” Fitzpatrick said. “And I feel like the outcomes with that were gratifying to me, and I felt like I made a big impact.”
Treating patients with a personal touch is an important component in his career satisfaction.
“I try to treat the patient like they were my family member. So if I were having a patient come they were unsure of what they wanted to do, I would say ‘if you were my mother or my brother or sister, this is what I tell you,’ and I try to push that philosophy on my patients and my practice.
Fitzpatrick says UMC does a good job of taking care of the patient and not looking at the bottom line.
“How much money are we going to make off this patient? That is one thing that drives me crazy in medicine, as sometimes patients are looked at as a $1 sign,” Fitzpatrick said. “ I feel UMC does not do that at all, and the number one priority is taking care of the patient, and that is what drove me to take a position with UMC.”
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