became Chief Resident before beginning fellowship. Along the way, she also became a mother.
Her first son was born during the final weeks of her residency, and she spent his first year balancing motherhood with her responsibilities as Chief Resident. She had her second son during fellowship.
There were exhausting stretches. She remembers working 48-60 hour call shifts. She is quick to acknowledge that such schedules are not something she would advocate for today. But she also remembers something else about those years: she enjoyed them.
“ I tell other people thinking about medical school: it’ s a long journey and you have to enjoy the journey, don’ t wish it away,” she said.“ Embrace the challenges.”
That philosophy has stayed with her.
“ You can’ t just hope for tomorrow,” she said.“ You have to be engaged in what you’ re doing today.”
During her internal medicine training, a mentor helped her recognize where her interests could take her. She admired his skill as a general clinician but wondered whether she could ever reach that same level.“ I told him I never saw myself as being as good of a general clinician as he was,” she said.
His advice was to find something more specific to hone.
She had already discovered that she loved cardiology – the procedures, the imaging and the complexity – so she listened.
“ Cardiology gave me the procedural and imaging side but with the long-term relationship that I wanted,” she said.
That balance has become one of the things she treasures most about her career.
Dr. McFarland arrived in Louisville in 2004 after a chance conversation during an overnight call shift introduced her to a local cardiology practice.
Her career took a few unexpected turns after that. She spent a year doing locum work in Billings, Montana, completed a three-month CT fellowship in Philadelphia to become board certified in coronary CTA and eventually returned to Louisville.
She has now been with the same practice for 18 years. The practice has grown considerably since she joined. What was once a group of six physicians called Louisville Cardiology, is now a much larger organization with more than 20 physicians under the Baptist Health umbrella. And she has grown with the practice. In June 2025, she became managing partner, adding practice-management responsibilities to her clinical work.
She performs echocardiography, nuclear imaging and coronary CTA, and she is one of several physicians in the practice who also works in cardio-oncology. But the technology, procedures and images ultimately lead her back to the same place: the patient.
“ Seeing the patients is what I enjoy the most,” she said.
That connection has been reinforced throughout her years participating in medical mission trips. She has traveled to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, sub-Saharan Africa and more, experiences that have given her a perspective that transcends geography.
( continued on page 40)
November 2026 39