Doctors Making a Difference

We asked you to tell us about South Sound medical professionals who are making a difference in and out of the office, and you told us. No doubt about it, there are some amazing doctors and nurses doing a lot for our community. It was tough for the South Sound magazine editorial panel to choose who to highlight, because all the nominees are worthy of ink. And the ones we did choose are worthy of a lot more ink. Thanks to all who participated and shared their stories about medical professionals who have touched their lives – from helping diagnose and manage disease, to offering support in times of need, to simply inspiring with kind words, listening ears and amazing bedside manners. Here are 10 doctors — and one nurse — who are making a difference! Congratulations to all.



TEAM PLAYERS
Drs. Jason Brayley and Mark Mariani, Sports Medicine Physicians at MultiCare Orthopedics and Sports Medicine. Brayley works at Puyallup and Covington offices and Mariani is at Gig Harbor and Tacoma offices

Drs. Jason Brayley of Puyallup and Mark Mariani of Tacoma are serving patients, many of them athletes, throughout the South Sound. With many sports injuries unfortunately making headlines, it’s clear that keeping athletes safe and healthy on and off the field is an important mission.

And these two doctors are dedicated. In addition to maintaining a busy practice, Brayley is the Kenda Pro Cycling Team doctor and medical adviser. For fun he started racing cyclocross in the Seattle area! Mariani is proud to return to his alma mater, Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, as their team physician. He’s also a team physician for the Tacoma Rainiers and the Stadium High School Tigers football team in Tacoma.

“While we have a good amount of work to do, I am most excited about our commitment to develop a leading sports medicine program here in the South Sound,” Mariani said. “There are so many active individuals here in the South Sound, and they deserve great care close to home.”

Get Moving!
One of the most important health care issues facing Americans today is the lack of physical activity, according to Dr. Brayley. He said, “From elementary school children to working adults, we all need to get moving more! What a profound difference this would make in the amount of chronic disease that is so prevalent.”    



CARING FOR GENERATIONS
Dr. Devin Sawyer, family physician at Providence St. Peter Family Medicine Residency Program, Olympia

When Dr. Devin Sawyer isn’t treating grandma’s broken hip or delivering a baby, he’s busy showing other doctors-in-the-making how it’s done. And when he’s not working, he’s traveling abroad and helping those in need — this year he went to Bolivia and Haiti. Sawyer is a helper, a healer and a volunteer.

“Volunteering with Friends of Haiti was one of the single most life-changing professional experiences I’ve ever had,” Sawyer said. During the two-week Friends of Haiti mission trip, he helped provide primary care to about 4,000 patients. “Because of those experiences, I’m changed.”  He helps the less fortunate closer to home, too. He helped organize a free clinic at the Olympia Gospel Mission designed to deliver planed care to uninsured patients with diabetes, heart disease, lung disease and depression.  
He was born in England, lived in Brazil and moved to California as a teen. He became a naturalized citizen in 2000, and married his college sweetheart. They have two teens.

He feels privileged to be a doctor and enjoys helping young doctors find their way. He loves the transition when his residents go from caring for patients, to caring about patients. “The difference is relationship,” he said. “… that makes all the difference.”


DOCTOR AND MENTOR
Dr. Mark Grubb, physician at Woodcreek Health Care’s main campus in Puyallup and a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington

For decades, Dr. Mark Grubb has been serving kids both in the office and out. For the past 20 years, he’s led the Young Life Club at Sumner High School, where he’s spent a lot of time mentoring teens. He also teaches Sunday school at Calvary Community Church and runs a Wednesday night class for kids there, too. He mentors kids — and adults — facing all sorts of issues.

“I love working with children and other professionals who are dedicated to caring for children,” he said. “I feel that is my calling in life.” Grubb’s wife, Nancy, is a family practice doctor. They have two adopted daughters that keep them just as busy at home as they are at work.

In addition to serving youth, he also is on the Board of Directors for the Pierce County Medical Society and recently served as delegate to the Washington State Medical Society meeting. He’s been a member of the Pierce County Antibiotic Resistance Task Force for four years, and has been chairman for two of those years — their guidelines about how to deal with MRSA are used throughout the world.

He’s looking forward to a medical mission trip to Mexico this year and has gone on other medical mission trips to Guatemala.


FOLLOWING HIS CALLING
Dr. William Henry Holderman of Digestive Health Specialists, with nine clinics and five endoscopy centers throughout the South Sound

Dr. William Henry Holderman of Tacoma knew he wanted to dedicate his life to helping people when he was 11 years old. Both his father and maternal grandfather were family practitioners in California, so he was exposed to medicine early on.

“We entered a room together and I was introduced to an elderly woman who was bedridden. Even to an 11-year-old, it was obvious she was at the end of her life,” Holderman said. “She was delivered a tray of food, which she could not reach. As my father moved her tray closer and began to feed her, I watched a smile and a sense of dignity return to her face.”

Holderman found his subspecialty care in gastroenterology during his time at the University of Chicago. He worked with top leaders in the developing field of gastroenterology and saw the immense impact that skilled evaluations and treatments had on people’s lives. When he’s not directly serving patients, he shares his knowledge with others, lecturing both locally and regionally about inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and more.


WOMEN CARING FOR WOMEN
Dr. Elizabeth Grace Sanford, obstetrician and gynecologist and owner of Pearl Place Women’s Care and medical director of The Birthing Inn in Tacoma

Chances are if you live in the Tacoma area — and you know some babies — you’ve heard of Pearl Place Women’s Care and the Pearl Place Midwives. Pearl Place is owned by Dr. Elizabeth Sanford. She’s also the medical director of The Birthing Inn, Tacoma’s only free-standing birth center.
    
Pearl Place started with Sanford’s original practice in 1986, and grew through the years due to its popularity. Over the years, more practitioners joined the team. Sanford likes challenges. “Women did not go into medicine very often at the time I decided to do it,” she said.

She’s proud to be an independent OB/gyn practitioner running a local business because many medical facilities today are owned by large corporations.

Sanford lives in Grapeview and loves her dogs. They just started agility training. She also enjoys reading and is currently trying to write her own medical mystery.


AN OPEN BOOK
Dr. Mary Ann Woodruff of Pediatrics Northwest, with offices in Tacoma, Gig Harbor and Federal Way, and more offices throughout the South Sound

Dr. Mary Ann Woodruff grew up in a family that fostered the love to learn and read. She brings that same enthusiasm to her Pediatrics Northwest practice where she’s served patients for 20 years, and the community, too. She lives in University Place and serves on the Pierce County Library Foundation board, the Children’s Museum of Tacoma board and the Reach Out and Read national literacy program that promotes doctors giving patients books.

“My role in Washington state is to introduce Reach Out and Read to other physicians so that they can embark on this, too,” Woodruff said. “We’ve done this in our practice since 2001 and we will distribute nearly 10,000 books into little hands this year during check-ups.” About 90 medical practices statewide participate in the program, and Woodruff hopes more will join the effort.

Woodruff’s father is a pathologist, her mom a microbiologist. When she was growing up, she saw that they loved their work and that inspired her. She was surrounded by books and mentors, including her own pediatrician. “I am humbled by the opportunity to help each child find his or her compass, to listen to the stories families tell, to educate about health and to assist during times of illness.” Details: reachoutandread.org

She’s Grateful
“As a family we’ve been reflecting a great deal about ‘healing professions,’ ” Woodruff said. “Medicine is one of the coolest callings. I remember the day I opened my medical school acceptance letter … screams of joy (tempered by a sense of the reality I would meet). I had just listened to Supertramp’s ‘Dreamer.’ I’m still that silly little dreamer.”


SAVING LIVES FOR DECADES
Dr. Paul Hildebrand, medical director of Emergency Services at St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor and regional medical director of Emergency Services, Franciscan Health System

For about 40 years, Dr. Paul Hildebrand of Gig Harbor has been saving lives — treating every ailment imaginable, from heart attacks to gunshot wounds.

Now, as medical director of Emergency Services at the hospital, he’s focused on ways to make the ER run more efficiently. He implemented a system that’s resulted in 85 percent of walk-in patients being seen by an ER physician within about 15 minutes. Average wait in ERs across the nation is about two hours, according to St. Anthony officials.

“The secret to our success at St. Anthony is that we make our best effort to put the patients’ interests first,” the doctor said. “That we try to anticipate their needs and pull them through the hospital healthcare continuum — from admission to discharge — as efficiently and seamlessly as possible.”

When he’s not busy helping build and run one of the best hospitals in the area (he participated in the design and development of the brand new St. Anthony hospital that opened in March) he has helped build about 30 houses in Mexico along with others from Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church in Gig Harbor over the course of several summers.

Struck By Lightning
It’s true. Hildebrand was struck by lightning. “I lost a good part of my hearing, which is why I focus more on administration than on patient care today,” he said. “Because when patients tell you something, it is actually important that you hear what they are saying.”


A CALL TO ACTION
Nurse Maggie Lohnes, MultiCare administrator for Clinical Information Management at MultiCare Health System, Tacoma

Nurse Maggie Lohnes of Fox Island spent many years as an intensive care nurse. It was a fast-paced environment, and oftentimes caregivers didn’t have access to important information such as a patient’s medical history, allergies and test results. She wanted to fix that.

She’s the heart and brain behind MultiCare Connect, the electronic health record (EHR). “MultiCare is considered a pioneer in the use of EHR and this is because of the passion and knowledge of Maggie,” said Jennifer Aalgaard, the media and community relations official for MultiCare. “She has served on the advisory council to the Obama Administration on the implementation and benefits of the electronic health record.”
She is the chair of the Public Policy Committee for Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. She was co-lead author on “A Call to Action,” a set of recommendations sent to Congress about how adoption of healthcare information technology can support health care reform. “We were thrilled when Congress chose to include many of our recommendations in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” Lohnes said.


COMMUNICATION IS KEY
Dr. Diane Dakin, member of Group Health Cooperative who works at Olympia Medical Center

Her colleagues and patients say that Dr. Diane Dakin has a way with words, and a good bedside manner. She consistently has top quality and patient satisfaction scores. She not only treats patients as a family medicine physician, she also mentors new residents.

“Dr. Dakin makes communication a priority with her patients. During her 25-year career with Group Health, Dr. Dakin has made an art out of explaining diagnosis and treatment plans in understandable, detailed ways,” said Tiffany Buckner, communications consultant for Group Health Permanente.

Dakin, who lives in Olympia, says she enjoys the long-term relationships she’s developed with patients and their families. She was drawn to medicine while working on volunteer health projects in Latin America while she was in high school. “I believed public health might serve the needs of more people, but I eventually realized that my personality was better suited to the individual contacts with patients,” she said.

She served on a committee that helped change the nutrition policy in Olympia public schools. She thinks one of the biggest health problems Americans are facing today is obesity.


ART AND SCIENCE MEET
Dr. Khai Tran, medical director for the Carol Milgard Breast Center and chief of mammography, Tacoma

Studying complex mammograms in search of sometimes elusive cancer cells is no doubt an important job. Dr. Khai Tran, medical director for the Carol Milgard Breast Center, uses his background in art to sharpen his perspective in his quest to save lives.

“Having a background in art, I am very visually-oriented toward pictures and images. Since mammography is very visually intensive, it’s a natural advantage, and very enjoyable for me to do what I do,” he said.

Tran lives in Burien and is employed by TRA Medical Imaging in Tacoma. He spends most of his time at the new Carol Milgard Breast Center in Tacoma, one of the largest centers of its kind in the country, entirely dedicated to breast imaging and operated by a specialized staff. The center is named after Carol Milgard, a Tacoma philanthropist and 30-year breast cancer survivor. She was married to Gary Milgard, founder of Milgard Windows. “I get to use the most advanced technologies on a daily basis in the battle for early detection of breast cancer and thus make a real difference in people’s lives,” Tran said.

Cutting edge technology is cool, but the real inspiration comes from others and, “The courage and resilience of women who have had breast cancer, and my medical colleagues who put patients first above all else.” Details: carolmilgardbreastcenter.org

Biggest Challenge
“Being able to somehow maintain a balance between my commitments to my career, my family and still have time to pursue my passions. This is the most difficult challenge of all and requires constant effort.”

For the full story pick up the latest copy of South Sound magazine. Subscriptions are available by phone at 253.588.5340 or you may order your subscription online.