MEMBERS
DR. Who
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
MIRIAM KRAUSE, MD
Aaron Burch
B
orn in Heidelberg, Germany, Dr. Miriam Krause’s jour-
ney to Louisville was filled with rewards and surprises.
With the support of family and friends, she has built a
life more than 4,000 miles away from her hometown,
as a practicing reproductive endocrinologist and OB/
GYN for Fertility and Endocrine Associates. German,” Dr. Krause laughed. “I also had five years of French and
spent six months in Brazil which made me pretty fluent in Portu-
guese.” Adapting quickly to languages is useful when moving to far-
away places, but first Dr. Krause had to enter and complete medical
school. In 1999, she began her career at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität,
the Heidelberg University School of Medicine.
The daughter of Dietmar and Gerlinde, Dr. Krause is the oldest of
three siblings and the first of her family to go into medicine or live
in America. She and her two brothers were raised in the 5,000-per-
son village of Talheim in the south of Germany, and she lived there
until she moved out for college. Her parents loved to travel though,
taking their children to visit America, drive throughout Europe and
camp in Scandinavia. “Medical school was a change. I moved out after high school at
age 19. The university was just an hour away but, of course, I felt
a little lonely not being around my family at first, but soon I made
new friends and kept busy studying,” she recalled. It was during
medical school that Dr. Krause first began to consider a practice
in America. She rotated to the U.S. three times during her medical
school years, testing the waters.
“My parents had a camping bus, and we traveled a lot as I was
growing up,” Dr. Krause recalled. “In Scandinavia, you can camp
anywhere as long as you don’t destroy nature. So, we’d go wherever
we wanted to hike and kayak. I didn’t always like it, since there
were some summers where it rained the whole time. I preferred
the mountains or the beach, and we did some of that too. We liked
anything outdoorsy.” “I did one rotation at Texas A&M, a month in San Diego at an
urgent care center and then four months in Nebraska at UNMC. I
was open to anything,” Dr. Krause said. “Those were really useful.
They helped me learn more about the American medical system and
got me excited about wanting to do a residency here in America.”
From early childhood, Dr. Krause gravitated towards becoming
a physician. “Anytime anyone hurt themselves, I’d want to be the
one to clean it or put a Band-Aid on. That stuck with me through
school, and I always knew I wanted to be a doctor.”
While there are no prior physicians in the Krause family, Dr.
Krause’s mother was a language teacher and her father was a mechan-
ical engineer. Through their guidance came a natural inquisitiveness
in Dr. Krause which appeared, not just in her predilection towards
medicine, but also in the way foreign languages came easily to her.
“I always liked languages. I’m fluent in English and still remember
Graduating from medical school in November 2006, Dr. Krause
had to wait almost nine months before the next residency class
began in the U.S. To extend her medical knowledge, she spent six
months in Porto Alegre, Brazil, thanks to an exchange program
between Heidelberg University and the Universidade Federal Do
Rio Grande Do Sul (UFRGS for short).
“I’d never been to Southern America before. I thought everyone
there spoke English. Then I got to Porto Alegre, and no one spoke
English or German. I knew right away it was going to be interest-
ing,” Dr. Krause said, explaining that her research focused on the
lining of the uterus and the differing factors it can allow in relation
to implantation.
(continued on page 34)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to Louisville Medicine’s member spotlight section, Dr. Who? In the interest of simply getting to know each other
as a society of colleagues, we’ll be highlighting random GLMS physicians on a regular basis. If you would like to recommend any GLMS
physician member to the Editorial Board for this section, please e-mail [email protected] or call him at 736-6338.
OCTOBER 2017
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