UND alum Dr. Robert Grossman and his daughters on how North Dakota made them the physicians they are today<\/p>\n
The irony is not lost on Dr. Jodi Brehm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to watch our first surgery in high school,\u201d quipped Brehm, a 2001 graduate of the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences, of her and her sister, Dr. Jennifer Reid. The sisters\u2019 father, Dr. Robert Grossman (B.S. Med \u201971), had brought the pair to watch a laparoscopic surgery at the hospital in Hettinger, N.D., in the 1990s. \u201cOddly enough, I passed out, and she didn\u2019t. And now I\u2019m the surgeon and she\u2019s the psychiatrist, so there you go.\u201d<\/p>\n
From her home in Moorestown, N.J., Reid shrugged, pleading the fifth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched my sister go through surgical training and learned it was not my interest,\u201d Reid hedged with a smile.<\/p>\n
Such is the tone \u2013 knowing smiles, mutual support, and many laughs \u2013 when the physician-sister pair reflect on their childhood in Hettinger, their joint interest in medicine, and the differences between their practices today.<\/p>\n
As one might imagine, a family that produced two physicians must have had good medical role models growing up, and Brehm and Reid had such models in spades.<\/p>\n
The two trace their interest in medicine not only to their father, Robert Grossman, but their maternal grandfather, Dr. Melvin Jacobson, for whom the Jacobson Memorial Hospital Care Center in Elgin, N.D., is named.<\/p>\n
The son of two teachers whose own parents had immigrated to the U.S. from Europe, Grossman says that whatever his interests as a child may have been, his future was essentially mapped out for him by his own grandfather.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandpa put me on his knee when I was about six years old and said, \u2018Robert, you\u2019re going to be a doctor,\u2019\u201d laughed Grossman from his home in Bismarck, N.D. \u201cSo, that took care of it because he was bigger, stronger, and faster than I was.\u201d<\/p>\n
His grandfather\u2019s directive aside, Grossman acknowledged that it was his parents who \u201ctaught me the value of education and hard work,\u201d and encouraged him to pursue medicine at UND. Matriculating at UND in the late-60s, Grossman earned his B.S. Med degree in 1971. After finishing his M.D. degree in Colorado (UND didn\u2019t offer a four-year medical program at the time) and starting a residency in family medicine in Minneapolis, Grossman began \u201cmoonlighting\u201d in Hettinger.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I went to Colorado, I thought I was going to be a vascular surgeon,\u201d he recalled, adding that a phone call from Hettinger-based SMHS alum Dr. Jerome Sailer (B.S. Med, \u201948) got him thinking otherwise. \u201cAfter spending a month [at the Hettinger clinic] at the end of my senior year of Colorado, I realized that I was going into family medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n
The change of focus, said Grossman, had a lot to do with the jack-of-all-trades approach to medicine he saw \u2014 and quickly fell in love with \u2014 in rural family practice. So he stuck around over 30 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are days where I was 100 miles away from Hettinger and I was the only act around,\u201d he said, referencing D.A. Benton\u2019s classic leadership book Lion\u2019s Don\u2019t Need to Roar<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019d drive over to Macintosh and work until noon, and then I\u2019d get in the car and drive 60 miles to Eagle Butte and work there, and then I drive back home after five o\u2019clock. If a woman\u2019s coming in and wants to deliver a baby or a baby\u2019s not breathing, or if somebody\u2019s having a heart attack, or somebody loses a hand in an auger \u2014 you have to deal with that, and stabilize the situation in order to get patients to somebody specialized in that care.\u201d<\/p>\n Such a schedule didn\u2019t stop Grossman from falling in love with another of his affections, though, and he soon found himself married to Elgin, N.D., physician Melvin Jacobsen\u2019s daughter Patricia. The two have been together ever since and raised three children over the years, two of whom opted for a career in medicine.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure exactly how he did it, but I think in all of that time he missed only one basketball game of mine,\u201d smiled eldest daughter Brehm from her home near Racine, Wis. \u201cHe and my mom never slept and probably lived on concession stand popcorn for an extended period of time \u2013 he always made time for our activities. Both he and my mom held us all together. That helped me realize that you could work hard in medicine and could still have a very rich family life.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of that time \u201ctogether,\u201d both sisters admit, involved hanging out at what is today known as the West River Health Services hospital and clinic in Hettinger.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of the reason I was so interested in medicine is that I could go in and watch those [providers] work and get to know them,\u201d Brehm explained. \u201cIf I had an allergy shot, I\u2019d walk up to the clinic after school, get my own shot, and then hang out in the doctors\u2019 lounge. That was just a great place to grow up, and the older I got the more I thought I wanted to do this work.\u201d<\/p>\n So Brehm enrolled at UND as an undergraduate, stayed for medical school, graduated in 2001, and took on breast surgery as a specialty at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Ill.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s funny that my dad was going to be a vascular surgeon originally, because when I started medical school, he said, \u2018Don\u2019t be a surgeon,\u2019\u201d she laughed. \u201cBut my first rotation was with Dr. Steven Hamar (M.D. \u201972) in Bismarck, and at that point I decided it had to be surgery. I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.\u201d<\/p>\n Reid agreed, although she ultimately did take her father\u2019s advice. Earning her M.D. from Columbia University in New York City and completing a psychiatry residency at UCLA, Reid said that her own mental health struggles as a teenager and the desire to get to know her patients in a deeper way \u2013 plus the shortage of mental health providers nationally \u2013 drove her toward psychiatry.<\/p>\n \u201cGrowing up in a small town in rural North Dakota, I had periods of depression in high school and even in college,\u201d she recalled. \u201cWhen I was in high school, there just were no psychiatric treatment options. We didn\u2019t even have a therapist in town.\u201d<\/p>\n Such an experience initiated in her a desire to \u201ctry and reach people who may not have access to mental healthcare,\u201d she said \u2013 and to help produce quality mental health information available to everyone. Adding that telehealth is going a long way to help more people access such healthcare, and that changes in state licensure policies might bolster the cause, Reid began thinking in 2020 about building on her regular contributions to online magazine Psychology Today<\/a> by developing a podcast. She did so \u2014 at the height of COVID \u2014 in the hope that she might better stay in touch not only with her own patients increasingly affected by a global pandemic but those countless non-patients across the nation who were stuck at home and whose mental health was deteriorating.<\/p>\nThe surgeon<\/h3>\n
The psychiatrist<\/h3>\n