Internal Medicine Interest Group
Physician STATs
1. Name: Stuart Levin
2. Age: 46
3. College: Duke (note #4 ((after seeing the light :) )
4. Medical School: UNC
5. Residency: University of Alabama-Birmingham
6. Fellowship: Yale University
a. Reasons for selecting your residency/fellowship: Residency-enjoyed the cognitive stimulation in direct patient care and felt that being an internist provided not just challenges but opportunities for many pathways into clinical medicine
Fellowship-had worked in research in pediatric pulmonary at UNC, and also had felt the most respected and broad-ranging internists at UAB were pulmonologists (and ID)
b. Current title(s): Internist/Pulmonologist-Wake Internal Medicine Consultants, Raleigh; Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, UNC
c. Reasons for current title (may include brief trajectory of your career, interests or even how your interests have changed over time): I had started out in search of a position in either academic or private practice in the Southeast. Having moonlighted for 6 years at VA ER’s during residency and fellowship, I had developed an interest in continuing primary care while specializing in pulmonary medicine. Such positions were relatively few. However, at my brother’s wedding at the Carolina Inn during my last year of fellowship, I learned of a position in Raleigh that fit the bill (from my brother’s brother-in-law Ben who had a child in the same preschool with my current partner). I have now been in the same position for 15 years.
During this time my practice has clearly evolved. Initially I practiced both inpatient and outpatient internal medicine, as well as pulmonary/critical care at Rex, WakeMed and Western Wake (now WakeMed Cary). Currently I concentrate on outpatient internal medicine with a lesser degree of outpatient pulmonary medicine (and occasional inpatient consults on my own patients at Rex).
7. Have you had any seminal moments during your medical career – particularly ones that ignited an interest in your chosen field? During my first year of practice, I was asked by one of my UNC classmates, John Perry (now executive director of Wake AHEC) to become involved in medical student and resident teaching. I have continued to precept medical students, and recently was successful in encouraging my practice to start hosting UNC internal medicine residents for their ambulatory primary care rotations. This interest has led me to serving on the NC Medical Society Med Education committee and as a statewide CME surveyor. Having witnessed firsthand the decline in interest in primary care among students and residents, I have also begun to take a role in primary care advocacy thru the NC chapter of the American College of Physicians. I was asked to be the only non-full-time UNC faculty member to attend the curriculum conference last November to share my concerns about UNC’s role in the face of statewide and national concerns regarding primary care. Currently I am working with other primary care advocacy groups (NCAAFP and NC Pediatric Society) to help develop a “united front” on this issue statewide.
8. What other career options were you considering? After moving to 4 states in 4 years during high school due to family economic issues, followed by another four years as a work-study student at Duke and clerk/assistant manager at Super Dollar in Raleigh I realized that having job security is a good thing (not likely to be a problem within primary care anytime soon). As an undergraduate I considered careers in law, public policy, and biomedical research, double majoring in chemistry with biochemistry specialization as well as history.
9. What – in all honesty – do you do? Preventive primary care, treat acute/subacute medical problems, do pulmonary consults, read sleep studies and pulmonary function testing, supervise pulmonary rehabilitation program, precept medical students
10. What is your favorite part of the job? Making a difference in people’s lives (hopefully in a positive sense)
11. What is your ‘least favorite’ part of your job? Administrative items regarding third parties (dealing with preauthorizations, drug substitutions, etc.)
12. What is the dirtiest part of your job? Rectal exams
13. What is the part of your job that you least expected to be doing? I did not expect the development of hospitalists (which postdated my fellowship training) and the resultant divide of care between outpatient and inpatient settings. I would not have anticipated that my practice would be as focused on preventive care when I started in this practice. Additionally, there has clearly been an increase in time pressures due to declining primary care reimbursements in the past 10 years.
14. How do you see your specialty changing in the future? There will need to be a resurgence in US primary care in the next few years by incentivizing students and residents to pursue careers in this area. However, the dry pipeline will result in general internal medicine becoming more understaffed in the near term. The long needed health care reforms including universal access to care requires a strong primary care infrastructure. However, the national attention to the decline within primary care medicine in the US has come at least a decade too late. Fortunately the current health care legislation has begun to address many of these issues regarding medical education and workforce, as well as primary care reimbursement.
15. Do you work in public or private medicine? Academic or non-academic? Private practice, non-academic (though teaching as volunteer faculty)
16. What are your hobbies? I spend most of my free time with my wife and 3 kids (8, 6 and 3). I live 0.9 miles from work so occasionally see all of our children at lunch during summer, and our 3 year old son during remainder of the year. Most of our weeknights and weekends are focused on family. During the week I usually get home around 6 and our oldest daughter is in bed by 8:30 PM. Our interests are varied-I assist my oldest daughter with her violin (she tries out for the Triangle Youth Symphony next week), help take both daughters to year-round swim lessons, Girl Scouts and religious school, and hopefully enjoy each others company (most of the time anyway). I am chairing a committee (comprised of Rex, NC Museum of Art, City of Raleigh and State of NC Property Office among others) to help plan the long-term future of Blue Ridge Road within the 2030 Raleigh Comprehensive Plan. I previously served as founding chair of the Triangle-wide Jewish film festival and Raleigh Jewish community day school.
17. How much personal freedom do you have? See above
18. How flexible is your job in terms of scheduling and tasks? All the practitioners in our practice have a strong work ethic, but we are essentially able to make our own schedule. I am off ½ day a week (Thursday PM), and try to schedule meetings relating to my outside interests for that time. Additionally, having had the same EMR system since 1996 (probably one of the first groups in the Triangle to do so), much of the work not requiring face-to-face patient interaction can be done from home. Finally, if I am here, it means we made it back yesterday from a weeklong family trip to London in celebration of our 10th wedding anniversary.