DR. WHO Rebecca McFarland, MD
Long before Dr. Rebecca McFarland was listening to hearts through a stethoscope, she was fascinated by what was happening inside them. At 5 years old, she announced to her mother that she wanted to become a doctor. A few years later, that curiosity became something much more tangible.
She grew up in northern Ohio, mostly in Mansfield, in a family where medicine was never far away. Her mother was a surgical nurse, and her father, before entering the insurance business, had been a state highway patrolman. Both parents worked call schedules, which occasionally meant their children had to tag along to the hospital.
She remembers sitting with her sister in the women’ s surgical locker room while their mother worked in the operating room. Except she didn’ t stay there.
“ I’ d sneak out and try to find where they were in the OR so I could see what they were doing,” she said.
Her fascination with the human body only grew. In her rural community, some of her relatives were farmers, and one of her aunts raised and butchered chickens. When Dr. McFarland was about 5, she went to help with the process.
“ I was absolutely fascinated,” she said.“ When we opened the chickens up, I was amazed. I would take the organs out, pick them apart, and I loved it. I was never squeamish. I was fascinated by how the organs worked.”
That curiosity would eventually lead her to cardiology, but the path was not always straightforward. And throughout the journey – from medical school to residency, fellowship, motherhood, mission trips
38 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
by Kathryn Vance and nearly two decades of practicing cardiology in Louisville – another influence has remained just as important as her fascination with science: her faith.
She came to a saving faith in Jesus at 13 and has carried that faith into every stage of her life and medical career. For her, caring for patients is not simply a profession. It is a calling rooted in the belief that every person she encounters has inherent worth.
“ When I am taking care of patients, or working with staff, whatever it may be, I realize it’ s a calling to care for other people made in the image of God,” she said.“ He sees them as sacred, and so should I.”
That perspective has become a kind of compass for her, not only in how she treats patients, but in how she approaches the inevitable frustrations and challenges of medicine.
“ No day is perfect and no person is perfect,” she said.“ They’ re made as special and unique as I am.”
For her, that belief changes the way she practices medicine. A patient is not simply a heart, an echocardiogram or a set of test results. The person sitting across from her has a life, a purpose, a family and a story.
Dr. McFarland attended Taylor University, a small Christian college in northern Indiana, where she met her husband. She went on to medical school at the Medical College of Ohio, now the University of Toledo, and stayed there for her internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship.
Her training was demanding, but she remembers it fondly. She took an unusual path through medical school, entering an internal medicine internship instead of completing a traditional fourth year. She ultimately