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FIRST-YEAR RESIDENT Martha Rodriguez greets a young patient in the Valley Baptist Family Practice Residency Clinic.
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Valley Baptist residency program puts faith into practice
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___HARLINGEN--When Bruce Leibert talks about putting faith into practice, he has a specific kind of practice in mind--medicine.
___As director of the Family Practice Residency at Valley Baptist Medical Center, Leibert strives to produce doctors who will walk their faith as much as they talk their trade.
___Leibert was hired five years ago to create a unique residency program at the 500-bed hospital, which is an affiliated agency of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The
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DARRYL WHITE confers with Chad White and Elias Hernandez as they jointly make morning rounds in the hospital.
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program was initiated by Valley Baptist Medical Center President Ben McKibbens.
___Leibert, a former Army major and Desert Storm veteran, attacks the task as a Christian soldier, marching as to war against both physical and spiritual illnesses. He calls it practicing "excellent medicine for an excellent Lord."
___Residents who are involved in the program often call it the most amazing thing they've ever seen in their medical training.
___"You can learn how to be a good doctor anywhere you go," explained third-year resident Chad White. "Here, you learn how to minister to your patients, how to pray with your patients. You see an example of how to pray with your patients, how to witness to them, how to lead them to Christ."
___The medical training does not take a back seat to ministry, however. For Leibert and the program's five other faculty members, ministry and medicine go hand in hand.
___Faculty member Nancy Rickerhauser recalls the criticism lodged against the program by
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DARRYL WHITE takes notes as Elias Hernandez reports on a patient just admitted to the Emergency Room.
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a former student, who was not a Christian. While not criticizing the medical training, the student complained, "You can't separate the Christian nature of the program."
___What was meant as an insult actually was a compliment, Rickerhauser explained, because it confirmed that the faculty has succeeded in intertwining their faith and practice.
___Faculty members not only teach about faith, they model for the residents how to be Christian doctors, not doctors who happen to be Christian.
___"I had doctors I worked with in medical school who were Christians, but I never saw them do anything other than what other doctors do," said White, who grew up in First Baptist Church of Hamlin and went to medical school in Texas after graduating from Howard Payne University.
___Not so at Valley Baptist Medical Center, he said. The practice of prayer and the discipline of Bible study permeate everything the residents and faculty do.
___"Our staff are a beautiful example of people who love the Lord," Leibert said. "They model that Jesus Christ must be a part of medicine or medicine fails."
___So the daily morning report time begins with case studies and medical teaching but ends with a missions emphasis and prayer time. Before heading out to see patients in the clinic or make rounds in the hospital, residents and faculty members join hands and pray.
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RESIDENTS eat a quick lunch during a daily lecture before returning to appointments. Program director Bruce Leibert is seated to the left of the speaker.
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___Residents participate in local churches and in a weekly Bible study at the clinic. Their spouses also have a weekly Bible study led by Leibert's wife.
___Once a week, some of the residents and faculty members load up their gear and head across the border into the Mexican colonias, where they work in conjunction with Texas Baptists' River Ministry.
___Once a month, the residents participate in a spirituality forum, where they talk in depth about how to bring matters of faith in their practice.
___And in the Harlingen hospital and clinic, the physicians regularly ask patients if it would be OK to pray with them before leaving. And almost always, the patients say yes.
___The argument that doctors should not talk about religion with their patients because the patients are vulnerable doesn't wash with Leibert. "When I offer to pray with someone, I'm vulnerable. I'm going to show a big part of who I am."
___But from his vantage point, the vulnerability pays off.
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| RESIDENTS catch up on e-mail and research at their shared cubicles at the clinic. |
___For example, he recalls an older man who came into the hospital dying of lung disease. He was scared and angry as a team of the family practice physicians stood around his bedside.
___One of doctors sensed that "this was the right time to share the gospel," Leibert said. As a result, the dying man enthusiastically professed faith in Christ and was reconciled with several family members before dying.
___"We practice good medicine with the best hope we have in Christ," he asserted.
___And because of this compassionate connection with patients, it is not unusual for residents and faculty members not only to attend the funerals of their patients who die, but often they are asked to speak at those funerals.
___The family practice residency at Valley Baptist offers a climate diametrically opposed to the dysfunction often portrayed on television and in movies. Leibert has intentionally created a family-friendly environment, where residents' and faculty members' children are free to visit and see what goes on.
___Resident and faculty families get together for social events once a month, and each year they all pack off together for a weekend retreat.
___"We're here to train up families to serve Jesus Christ, not just doctors who happen to have families attached," Leibert explained.
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RESIDENT Steven Higginbotham joins the group in prayer after morning report.
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___Although he's not an overbearing or even always-visible figure in the residency program, Leibert is the driving force behind the program's energy. An active member of Calvary Baptist Church in Harlingen, he is part father figure, part educator, part friend and many parts encourager to the residents.
___White described Leibert as a Chihuahua--and he meant it as a compliment to describe Leibert's boundless energy hardly contained in his small physique. The wiry ex-Army major is "the most active encourager and witness I've ever seen," he said.
___In addition to being a training ground for Christian doctors, the family practice residency at Valley Baptist seeks to address a critical shortage of primary care physicians along the border. Cameron County and adjoining Hidalgo County are classified among the lowest ratio of primary care physicians to resident population of all counties in the United
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FACULTY MEMBER Darryl White joins residents Elias Hernandez and Chad White in praying for a patient at the hospital bedside.
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States.
___Addressing this problem was one of the primary goals of Valley Baptist Medical Center, Leibert said. When the clinic opened five years ago, just the addition of the initial staff and residents significantly increased the availability of family practice physicians in Harlingen.
___And six of the program's 17 graduates have remained in the area to establish their own family medicine practices. "That alone doubled the number of family doctors in this town," Leibert reported.
___Six other graduates of the program now serve as family doctors in smaller Texas towns like Waxahachie, Dumas and Muleshoe. Three serve in the armed forces.
___In Harlingen, Valley Baptist built a stand-alone building for the family practice residency across the street from the hospital. Patients come there just as they would any other doctor's office. About three-fourths of the building houses the exam rooms, offices and procedure rooms of the clinic, while a small portion provides faculty offices, a briefing room and cubicles for residents, as well as two bedrooms and a bathroom for residents who are on call at night.
___The modern, attractive facility serves both the wealthy and the poor. And Leibert insists both are treated the same.
___No one is required to pay before being treated. And no one is required to wait longer to see a doctor because they don't have the right insurance.
___"Jesus wouldn't separate the Medicaid patients from the others," Leibert insisted.
___In this doctors' office, there's little need to stop and ask "What would Jesus do?" because those in charge are working hard to model a Jesus lifestyle every day.
___And the key to that often is prayer.
___As a physician, there are "a lot of things I can't fix," Rickerhauser acknowledged. "Through prayer, you're acknowledging in a way that 'I can't fix this, but we're going to someone who can.'"
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