Get to know Dr. Richard Redman, St. Peter Med Staff President:
- Where are you from?
- I grew up in Denton, MT. Population of about 300 people. My dad was a carpenter before he and my mom took over the local hardware store. I’ve lived in Montana, North Carolina, and Washington state.
- How long have you been with Providence?
- Since July 2009. We were private practice (South Sound Pulmonary Associates) when I first came here. We contracted to cover the ICU and inpatient pulmonary consults. We joined PMG in May 2016.
- What thing(s) are most important to you personally/professionally?
- My family and balance are most important to me, although I’m terrible at balance. We love the outdoors (mostly hiking and camping). We like to travel, but aren’t very good at planning trips. We are working on getting better. My wife and I cycle and enjoy hiking, camping, and backpacking. I like yardwork. Dust and clutter cause me to feel sad and stressed out. We like Seinfeld and New Girl. We are grateful to support our son’s blossoming soccer career every single weekend.
- I enjoy the balance of inpatient and outpatient work that pulmonary and critical care provides. Our specialty provides good opportunity for getting to know people and manage their long term illnesses, learning and performing procedures, and managing complex critically ill patients. Bronchoscopy has evolved a lot over the past 10 years, and this keeps things interesting. I enjoy our multidisciplinary approach to lung cancer diagnosis and treatment. This has also evolved A LOT and has been quite rewarding. Palliative care is important to me. Helping family members during this journey has been surprisingly one of the most rewarding parts of my job.
- Why did you decide to get involved in leadership?
- Probably because I’m not good at saying no. I’m not sure I’m very well cut out for leadership, but I keep getting asked to do things, so I must do something right or everyone else is smart enough to just say no. Probably the latter. I think I’m pretty good at hearing everyone’s side of a situation and seeing the big picture. I most of the time remember why we are here (to help people who are sick and prevent healthy people from getting sick) and I grew up in a place where we really had minimal access to health care. This helps me keep things in perspective. Providence and our entire healthcare system has a TON of problems, but I know we are very lucky to work here and a lot of places are functioning on a different level. There are things we always need to be trying to make better, but we are also very luck to live and work in a pretty good place.
- I’m pretty level headed, and people seem to respond well to that.
- I hate telling people that they messed up. This is a huge challenge for me, and something I’m always working on. That being said, I think people know I hate doing it, and so the conversation always seems to go OK since they can tell I’m trying to be their advocate and not their judge.
- Having a pretty visible presence in both the inpatient and outpatient worlds has also been helpful. A lot of people know who I am (for better or worse)
- What would you like to accomplish as med staff president? What things do you think are most pressing?
- Mostly to survive it.
- I guess our first order of business is getting the new bylaws passed. I’d also like to see us improve our peer review process. We have a lot of work to do to improve our accountability and make sure people stay competent in what they are doing. I’d like to see us develop a system where we can still be advocates for our providers, continue to bring in new technology, give people tools to stay current, but also hold ourselves accountable when things don’t go as they should.
- I’d also like to see us become more efficient at credentialing people and improve communication between the med staff office, new candidates, and our leadership.
