ANSWERING THE CALL TO MEDICINE
A Career in Medical Administration
My career in medicine has been a blessed voyage that has included robust experiences in ambulatory and hospital clinical care, medical student and residency education, research in academic medical centers and a focus in medical leadership. Some may say I truly had a career involving all four legs of the“ medical career foot stool.” In retrospect, it is not very surprising that I ended up in administration even though it was not on my radar when I completed residency. All my siblings are in business, and I even owned a couple of companies while in college and medical school and worked in my family’ s restaurant since the age of 11. I thought I went in a completely different career direction from the rest of my family, but I was obviously wrong to some extent. During medical school, I was focused on making my mark in family medicine and prevention. I recall constantly talking about opening my own multi-disciplinary group practice that was on the leading edge of disease prevention and health promotion. I even designed an office building in my secret“ idea sketchbook.” In fact, I decided to
by ROBERTO CARDARELLI, DO, MPH, MHA
pursue a master’ s in public health( MPH) dual degree focused on preventive medicine during medical school. I thought I had it all planned out.
Then something happened and I got bit by the research bug. I had some great mentors in my MPH and medical school programs, and they showed me how research is a way to impact populations through new knowledge and innovations. While I never wavered from my family medicine aspirations, my MPH became research focused in epidemiology. The“ double hook” was when I started publishing and realized how good it felt to see how my team’ s work or opinions were in printed materials and endured over time. The thought that our research could impact populations was tremendously rewarding and I was all in.
My quest to find the perfect residency centered around a program that brought together an intense residency experience and had research opportunities to grow my knowledge. I matched into the Baylor College of Medicine program in Houston, Texas and narrowed in on my research focus areas of chronic disease, practice improvements and health disparities. I was also able to learn about a model that brings many primary care clinics together across a
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