‘What a fantastic place.’ Why these three doctors returned to Columbus after med school
St. Francis-Emory Healthcare recently highlighted three Columbus doctors who decided to bring their expertise back home after medical school.
Doctors who choose to return home make a difference in the community, said Dr. Jagdeep Singh, chief medical officer at St. Francis-Emory Healthcare. They care for and treat the friends, family and neighbors they grew up with, he said.
“A common theme in many of these physician’s stories is a spark of inspiration they received growing up from a teacher, loved one or relative,” Singh said. “I have no doubt these physicians will inspire our next generation of medical professionals in Columbus.”
‘The city that raised me’
Dr. Laura Snyder, a physician at OBGYN Associates, loved to play the game Operation during her childhood in Columbus. She doesn’t have any vivid memories of deciding she wanted to be a doctor, Snyder said, but her eighth grade teacher at Brookstone School tells her that Snyder made the proclamation as a student in their class.
“I’ve always really enjoyed working with my hands and helping people,” Snyder said. “So, I knew that I wanted to do something that involved a surgical aspect of medicine.”
Snyder left Georgia to attend Wake Forest University for her undergraduate training before going to the Medical University of South Carolina. She then did four years of residency training at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon.
During her education and training, Snyder found that working in the OBGYN field was a rewarding experience She was trusted to help guide women in a private and personal part of their life, Snyder said.
“I think that one of my favorite aspects of OBGYN is educating women,” she said. “Because I feel like education is empowerment for women.”
She didn’t always plan on returning to Columbus, Snyder said. She thought since she’d grown up here that she would leave and experience the world. But over the course of her training, Snyder realized that she wanted to go back home.
“It’s the city that raised me,” she said. “This community rallied behind me. And to be able to deliver babies at the hospital where I was born is pretty special.”
‘I realized what we have’
Dr. Kevin McRae, a physician at OBGYN Physician Partners, attended a number of elementary schools in Columbus, including the now closed Edgewood Elementary School. It was during this time that he began to realize he wanted to be a doctor like his father, Dr. Sylvester McRae.
“I absolutely fell in love with science, the human body and math and things of that nature,” McRae said.
His father exposed him to medicine, but he wasn’t the only influence. McRae met other doctors in the community who inspired him including Dr. Delmar Edwards, who was the first Black physician to practice surgery in Columbus.
“I didn’t know what field I was going to go into,” he said. “But I just knew medicine was going to be the thing for me.”
In the end, McRae’s father was one of the reasons he chose to do OBGYN, he said.
After graduating from Columbus High School, McRae attended Hampton University in Virginia and spent time in Boston before attending medical school at St. Matthew’s University in the Cayman Islands. When he finished medical school, he did an internship at Grady Hospital in Atlanta and got his residency in Nashville.
As McRae was coming out of training, he heard “horror stories about people getting thrown to the wolves.” Doctors are trained well during their residency, he said, but things are different when there isn’t an attending supervising them.
Choosing a career as an OBGYN allowed McRae to work with his father, he said, who he knew would always have his back and was an excellent doctor and surgeon. He also wanted to come home to be in Columbus again.
“During the midst of seeing the world, I realized what we have in Columbus, Georgia,” McRae said. “And what a fantastic place that it is. What the city has changed into from when I first left town.”
‘It won’t feel like work’
Dr. Melanie Crutchfield Whitten, a breast surgical oncologist, grew up off Buena Vista Road and was a cheerleader at Columbus High School.
Whitten has known she wanted to be a doctor since she was in the fourth grade. She took advantage of the STEM programs that were offered for young women. Her aunt, Double Churches Elementary School Principal Paula Shaw-Powell, put her in a program called GIRLS, which stands for “Gee, I Really Like Science.”
The program allowed the group to visit Howard University Medical School while in high school, Whitten said, and the experience left an impact on her.
Whitten’s mother became a nurse practitioner when she was in middle school, so she became exposed to medicine through the physicians at St. Francis-Emory.
“I always knew Columbus was a nice place to come and to grow,” Whitten said. “And the patients were always great to my mom.”
Leaving Columbus for college and medical school were great experiences, she said, but in the back of her mind she always knew she could come back home.
Whitten practiced medicine in the Atlanta suburbs for four years and in the Phoenix suburbs for about a year when she began thinking about returning home to be closer to her parents and grandmother.
“This is where (my mom) built her career,” Whitten said. “And my dad has done very well here as well. And so I thought it’d be nice to be back home.”
Whitten hopes that other young students in Columbus who want to be doctors follow their hearts if medicine is something they want to do.
“Medical school and residency and fellowship is a long time,” Whitten said. “But you’re doing something during that time. So, you might as well do what you love because it won’t feel like work.”
This story was originally published April 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘What a fantastic place.’ Why these three doctors returned to Columbus after med school."
