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Working from the Heartland |
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Therese O'Brien |
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"I gave up too easily and accepted positions that were logically and intellectually a perfect natural progression based on my skill sets. I was gifted with intelligence and a great education. So I can rationalize anything convincingly." |
But perhaps there comes a day when you bend down into the state-of-the-art Jenn-Air oven to pull out a sheet of fresh-baked cookies. And your back goes out. Suddenly you're in a pain that your doctors tell you will accompany you the rest of your life. Or you find a lump. Suddenly you're coping with radiation or chemotherapy. The systems that you know can serve you only so far. And then you need to augment them -- but not necessarily replace them -- with alternative approaches to your life.
Many people are finding themselves in such a place where the conventional western systems need help. Tucked into a Williamsburg-inspired office building in Buckhead, EverWell is a clinic that brings time-tested and honored eastern therapies to the western medical methodologies. And both patients and physicians are recognizing the value of these gentle, non-intrusive treatments as viable alternatives to the more invasive, chemical intensive ways of managing pain and disease. And it's up to Therese O'Brien, EverWell's director of marketing, to bridge the gap between East and West.
"I go out into the health care community and talk to practitioners about what tools the alternative complementary medicine can bring to them," she says. "I'm a little bit 'out there' but I can still speak the language and I can cross back and forth over the cultural bridge, telling the story of how we can integrate the best of ancient traditions with modern medicine today. That option can have a dramatic impact on the health and happiness of physicians' patients."
Therese's power to cross that bridge comes from a heritage of education that she inherited from both her parents. Both parents were teachers, her father choosing to teach med school students at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, instead of pursuing a full-time medical practice himself. From him she learned the value of sharing life-changing information with those who will ultimately heal others. From her mother, she received the push she needed to pursue her own education.
"Mother impressed upon me a strong focus on education for women," she says. "She's the one who is responsible for my MBA degree. She felt really strongly about the need to choose a profession and to get as much education as you can. It equips you to make choices and allows you to take care of yourself financially."
A master's in business administration from the University of Florida ultimately returned her to a career supporting the needs of physicians, following in her father's footsteps. Opportunity after opportunity came along, and soon she found herself working in managed care -- the beginnings of the HMO system of health care. At first it looked good: She made valuable contacts and connections. But soon she found herself working against the interests of physicians, rather than for them. Thus she found herself working against the dictates of her heart and loyalties. It made sense on paper. It was good business, but she knew it was wrong for her.
"I wanted to work on the side of the doctors and the hospitals," she says. "I was in tune with that value but I didn't know how to go about doing it. Until my dad mentioned that he had seen notices in the back of physicians' journals from companies that help doctors find jobs. Physician recruitment firms! A perfect match! I was there for four years and loved it. My clients were hospitals and medical groups that needed to expand. And I helped physicians develop their resumes and plan their careers. It was great while it lasted.
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"There's a time when you're exactly where you're supposed to be. You're living your calling, you look forward to going to work every day. Everything is right on track and you're learning. Then there comes an end to that particular cycle and you start feeling some restlessness."
The industry was shifting, and hospitals were no longer interested in retained search firms. At the same time she was developing a following as a writer advising doctors on how to manage their careers. And she began developing an interest in patient/physician relationships. And she began to see that the business side of conventional western medicine was increasingly wrong for her.
"I was attracting all the wrong kinds of people into my life. I knew I was off-track and that I needed to stop. I needed to get back in touch with where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing," she says. "I began mentally unhooking from the world of managed care and physician recruitment."
But tempting opportunities still fell into her lap. Each opportunity made good business sense. But each opportunity would ultimately feel wrong somehow.
"I gave up too easily and accepted positions that were logically and intellectually a perfect natural progression based on my skill sets. I was gifted with intelligence and a great education. So I can rationalize anything convincingly," she says. "But soon every time a job came up that was logically and intellectually right for me, I would intuitively feel a heavy weight on my chest. I had this sense that I should just be quiet and wait."
"I didn't know it at the time, but Ever Well was up and running," she says. "But it wasn't ready for a marketing person yet. I guess I was waiting for it to be ready. If I had overridden my intuition and taken the next job that was right for me despite my feelings, I wouldn't have been in a position to see the ad that Ever Well ultimately placed in the newspaper."
With three centers already established in Atlanta, and two more opening next year, EverWell needed a representative who could speak to physicians about the eastern practices that could compliment their more accustomed approaches to health care and stress and pain management. Someone who could cross that cultural bridge with credibility. Someone like Therese.
"I've spent my entire life talking with doctors about ways to improve their careers and practice," she says. "Having been in the health care field for 11 years, I have a good grasp of how the process works in the medical office. My background may never actually come up in conversation, but my demeanor gives me the credibility I need to introduce the services of EverWell effectively.
"We've taken the key elements of Chinese medicine (acupuncture, acupressure and herbal therapies) and combined them with mind/body theory to teach patients how to help themselves manage their pain, use their energy better and relax.
"What I do for EverWell is go out into the health care community and introduce the practitioners to the tools that alternative complementary medicine can bring to them."
And, while she is speaking about different ways of approaching patient care, she finds herself speaking to the same people who had learned to trust her over the years when the subject was about managing their own careers.
"The cool thing is I'm still working with many of the groups I've worked with before," she says. "There's a physician group here that's now the largest oncology practice in Atlanta because of the time I once helped several physician groups combine their resources. And now, several years later, I will be going back to these same people to tell them about how this complementary practice will help their patients recover from cancer therapies and be able to move on to the next phase of their treatments."
That's credibility.
Copyright 2005 by Martha Finney. All rights reserved.