Helping Make the Miracle
Dr. Mark McTammany, OB-GYN
Mark McTammany wasn’t going to be an obstetrician-gynecologist.
“My father was an OB-GYN and I promised myself that I would never do it. Then, when I was doing my (specialty) rotations in medical school, I discovered it was the best thing in the world,” he says. “What could be better? Much of the time you deal with young, healthy people. What is more you deliver babies…you bring new life into the world.”
“I got older but I never really grew up,” said the Pennsylvania native who is flourishing in his profession in Melbourne, where he has been for 13 years, the last eight in solo practice at Medical Associates of Brevard. The forthright, witty graduate of George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington D.C., was named “Central Florida’s Best OB-GYN” by an Orlando television station in 2000.
Changes and Challenges
The biggest changes in the profession since his father practiced it have been technological, he says. “We have cell phones, the Internet, (and monitoring devices) and that allows me to spend more time with my family than my father was able to do, although the down side to obstetrics always has been the hours . . . that baby is going to be born when the time is right, and no technology is going to change that.”
“The nice thing about it, though, is that medicine in general doesn’t change. The basic relationship between a patient and a doctor doesn’t change . . . All the technology in the world can’t change that relationship,” says McTammany.
Technology does present its problems, however, and McTammany groans at the mention of popular “diagnostic” websites. “Though they provide a lot of information, the Internet has been a bane to many people in the medical profession. I often see people who presume they know what their problem is because they have looked up (their symptoms) online,” McTammany lamented. “But the website does not have all the diagnostic tools or the experience of a doctor, which can lead to conclusions that are potentially dangerous,” he says.
Filling the Need
McTammany makes life a little less dangerous for Brevard’s less fortunate women by volunteering at the health department as part of a program set up by its former director, Dr. Heidar Heshmati, whom he describes as “a really great man.”
“Under Dr. Heshmati’s plan, certain doctors volunteer to do a shift every couple of weeks, and obstetrics patients get assigned to certain doctors and continue to see them, so they build relationships with their doctors. They don’t see someone different every appointment, which is positive for patients and doctors. In return, the doctors get some protection from legal issues,” he explains.
On the Horizon
McTammany believes medicine will “change immensely” over the next few decades, not least because of health care/insurance reform.
“Personally, I think we should have national health care. If everyone in this country is going to have health care . . . that’s the only way to do it, the only way to ensure that everyone will get care. Of course, we’re going to have to make drastic changes . . . and it would be expensive,” he says. “So why not raise people’s taxes 10 percent or so, so that everyone will have health insurance?”
McTammany, who peppers conversations with comments like, “I really love what I do” and “It’s great, isn’t it?” chuckles when asked if either of his “typical kids,” 15-year-old Alexanna or 13-year-old Oliver, both students at Cocoa Beach Junior-Senior High School, will become a third generation McTammany obstetrician-gynecologist. “My children don’t want to do what I do because of the time I spend at work. But I tell them I create instant families. What could be better than that?
Related Articles:
Welcome, Twitter visitor! If you enjoy this post, don't hesitate to retweet!
