Award: Physician — Primary Care
Dr. John Snellings, chair and associate professor of Eastern Virginia Medical School Family & Community Medicine, leads by example in mentoring the next generation of primary care doctors.
“You can’t ask others to commit and volunteer their time and talent if you aren’t willing to do it yourself,” Snellings said.
In addition to his time caring for patients in the office, Snellings and his colleagues volunteer at community events on evenings and weekends. They often provide free physicals for high school students, hold community health screenings or run 10Ks to raise awareness for health issues.
He prioritizes mentoring medical students, residents and junior faculty. He helped combine the Portsmouth Family Medicine and Ghent Family Medicine residencies as program director and still serves in that capacity for the combined program.
Snellings shared his career insights with Inside Business.
Why do you do what you do? I chose primary care as my career specialty because it allows the fostering of long-term, therapeutic relationships with patients who trust me with their care. Academic family medicine provides the additional opportunity to practice like an “old school” physician — I round in the hospital, I see patients in clinic and I do procedures in-office (for patients of any age). All of this is while teaching and mentoring residents and medical students.
What keeps you motivated? The challenge of providing my best — staying clinically competent for my patients — and being focused and engaged for my colleagues and the learners with whom I work.
How do you cope with challenges? Challenges are opportunities for growth, whether the outcome comes in the form of an actual improvement or the learning of new approaches to better cope with challenges in the future. I think this perspective keeps me on an even keel for facing the issues that confront a department chair on a near-daily basis!
What are you most proud of? I always aspired to a career that combined intellectual stimulation with service to the community. I’ve been lucky to have had amazing mentors who propelled me along to my current position, and I’m proud of the work my colleagues and I are able to accomplish daily.
How do you measure success? Being in academic medicine provides numerous metrics for success, all important in their own ways: patients improving with their health issues, residents finding their confidence during their training, medical students having their “a-ha moments” and deciding which paths they want their careers to take (ideally, family medicine).
What lessons have you learned? Too many to recall without spending more time in deep thought, or maybe under hypnosis! The Golden Rule is an easy principle to remember for guidance; or, slightly adjusted for medicine: How would you want another doctor to take care of a family member? Keeping that perspective in mind as a practicing physician is very powerful.
Any advice for other mentors or those pursuing primary care? Primary care is not exactly a glamorous field of medicine, but it is paramount for a strong American health care system. For those already considering a career in primary care, we need you, and there will be mentors out there to help you along the way! For the mentors (and potential mentors), remember those who helped you get to where you are today and know that providing that guidance to the next generation is extremely fulfilling and beneficial to our community.
