August Physician Spotlight: Christine Waasdorp-Hurtado, MD

1. Who or what inspired you to become a physician?

I have wanted to be a physician since I was a small child. I had a brother who passed away from brain cancer. It had a huge impact on my family. We stayed super connected with the physician who took care of him and they became role models. I wanted to do what they did. For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a doctor. I never had another job choice despite my father’s great wishes to be a marketing executive like him. He didn’t convince me.

1. Briefly describe a "peak experience" from your career: interaction with a mentor, memorable patient, etc.

There have been lots of amazing experiences. I was a general pediatrician first in the army and then transitioned to a pediatric GI doctor after I left the army. My most memorable experience when I was in the Army, was a baby born with congenital cardiac defect that couldn’t be cared for in Korea. I had a baby in an isolate in a giant air force transport plane; just the mom, myself, and the baby. We flew from Korea to Washington DC, passing over Mount Fuji on the way. My job was to keep the baby alive until we reached Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where I got to hand the baby off to the CT surgery team. I have done lots of transports and that was pretty amazing to be in the belly of a huge transport with just me and a baby who liked to turn blue.

1. What led you to become involved in El Paso County Medical Society leadership?

I think connecting with your community and peers is very important from a mental health standpoint but also it is important for us to support each other, to know the resources that are present, and to make sure that we are doing our best to utilize the local resources so that we can all succeed together.

1. What advice would you give to physicians-in-training who are just starting their careers?

I think early in your career it is important to find a mentor, potentially more than one. I think many of us need career mentors and we also need personal mentors to help us keep the balance. That is my biggest piece of advice. My second is, depending on how early they are, we all have ideas of what it is like to be a physician and we have the dream to be action oriented potentially. Everyone needs to pause and look at the life those physicians have and decide is that a life they can continue and see for themselves and their families for the foreseeable future. It is important to pick a field that has a lifestyle that fits with your goals. That is really hard because you may have to give up a dream because it will not work with your life. To find that balance means sometimes taking a step back and finding the people that really have the lifestyle as well as thejob you want.

1. What do you enjoy doing outside of medicine?

I have several things I love to do outside of medicine. The first is travel. My family loves to travel and go to new countries. My youngest daughter is working on being fluent in Spanish so we try to go to Spanish speaking countries to force her hand a little bit to be our translator although we can get by well without her. We like immersing ourselves in new cultures, exploring food and people and new places. Our last trip was to Portugal. We had a fabulous time beach kayaking, food adventuring. Outside of travel, I do a lot of gardening and play a lot of tennis.