Clinician Spotlight: Dr. Allison Newman

Allison Newman, MD, is faculty at the University of Minnesota Woodwinds Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program. Prior to joining the department in 2021, she completed a fellowship in obstetrics and practiced full-spectrum family medicine for four years through Contra Costa Health Services in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to caring for a primary care panel at a Federally Qualified Healthcare Center, she practiced and taught high-risk and surgical obstetrics, coordinated obstetrical emergency simulations, and provided clinic consultation for patients with congestive heart failure.

What brings you joy in practicing your specialty and why?

I have always found joy in building connections with my patients. I feel grateful for the unique role that family doctors play in patients' lives - that we get to establish and continue deep, longitudinal relationships over months and years.

More particularly, I have a lot of passion for obstetrics and reproductive health. It brings me joy every time a baby that I delivered comes in for a well child check, or their parent comes to the clinic for their own wellness. Watching the babies I’ve delivered get older, and working with their parents as they decide when or whether to further expand their families, is very satisfying to me.

The other thing that brings me joy is that, as I grow as a physician and my interests shift, there's so much ability in family medicine to adjust my practice and to delve into new areas of medicine.  There's always something new to learn and focus on in our field.

Why did you choose family medicine?

Family medicine was a pretty natural fit for me. My interests are broad ranging, and there has never been one subset of patients or one body part that I felt like I could focus all of my energy on forever.

Along with that, the more that you work with people, the more you find that every aspect of health and wellbeing is interconnected. I love that in family medicine, we and our patients get to respect and attend to that interconnectedness. In family medicine, you get to take care of a whole person, and that feels so natural.

What advice would you give to yourself as a physician just starting out?

What I would have told myself starting out is that patients make choices that align with their own values, and it's our job to help patients figure out what those values are and guide them as they make the best decisions for themselves. It's not our job to tell patients what they should and shouldn't do prescriptively; work is so much more joyful if you respect that and let it help you grow as a clinician.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

I have a four-year-old daughter, and I love playing with her. She's at the best stage. Four-year-olds are loving and imaginative. They're completely unselfconscious. And she's just a joy to be around right now.

I find gardening very therapeutic. I moved back here from California three years ago, and I've been having a lot of fun building a new pollinator garden as I learn about gardening in Minnesota.

What are your key messages when teaching residents clinical care?

I try to remind residents to always listen to their patients. Our patients know their own selves better than we ever will. They've been living in their bodies their whole life, they often know when something is wrong, and they have a good intuition about what's going on with them. You just need to listen to what they have to say.

What are you especially proud of as you consider your clinical career so far?

I'm proud of how I've shaped my career around my interest in maternal and child health. Right after residency, I completed an obstetrics fellowship, and I worked as a teaching laborist half time. The other half was spent as a family doctor. Then I moved here.

I'm proud that I've been able to work to incorporate that skill set into an academic teaching practice. At M Health Fairview Clinic - Bethesda I've been able to start an early pregnancy ultrasound dating and risk assessment  teaching clinic for residents in partnership with our obstetrics RN care coordinator, Nicole Glumac. And we are just starting our first year of an OB track at our residency. So, I’m proud of continuing that emphasis as I’ve moved into more of a generalist family physician role.

What do you hope to achieve in the years to come?

I'm hoping to continue to build the Woodwinds Hospital Family Medicine Residency’s obstetrics  program. Family doctors should feel welcome, capable, and ready to practice on the labor and delivery floor, as well as a prenatal and postpartum setting.

I am doing a few particular things that I'm hoping to achieve in the not-so-distant future. I'm working to get credentialed in cesarean delivery, something that was part of my prior practice that I hadn't been able to do here. I'm also beginning work to achieve certification as a lactation consultant and building out gender care in our residency clinic. With both projects, I'm hoping to expand care in ways that meet the needs of the community around Bethesda family medicine. I intend to continue to partner with our community to figure out how to serve its needs, along with our residents and faculty.