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7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
Dr. Elsie Koh
Pioneering Woodland Park physician leads by example
WRITTEN BY SHAYLAH BROWN
B
y second grade, Dr. Elsie
Koh, 50, was already
navigating a pretend
operating room and
filling out prescription
pads. The daughter of a
physician, her fascination with medi-
cine began early.
Today, the North Caldwell resi-
dent is an interventional radiologist,
which means she provides minimally
invasive image-guided diagnosis and
treatment of disease.
When she chose her field, women
made up only 1 percent of it (they
now comprise 9 percent). She also
holds a leadership role in her same-
day surgery center in Woodland Park.
Here are seven things you should
know about her.
SHE ATTENDED BOARDING
SCHOOL IN THE
WASHINGTON, D.C. AREA.
Koh’s father, a native of Korea,
relocated to West Virginia because
there was a dire need for physicians
there after the Vietnam War. “The
education in West Virginia was not
that great, so my parents sent me
away to the Madeira School, an all-
girls boarding school in Greenway,
Va.,” says Koh. There, she got her
share of experience in different
professions, including interning for
Mel Levine, a U.S. congressman
from California, and volunteering at
The Washington Hospital Center.
“[During my sophomore year] I
would volunteer and shadow doc-
tors,” she says. “I would be standing
over the operating table watching
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HOLIDAY 2019 WAYNE MAGAZINE
chest surgeries and C-sections. I was
only 15 at the time. I was introduced
to the gruesome things at a very
early stage. It helped me prepare
for medical school because things
weren’t such a shock.
“Being in boarding school allowed
me to realize how limited my world
view was and how sheltered I was,”
she says. “That was really the begin-
ning of learning how to speak up
for myself and stand up for myself.
I was shy and introverted. This was
the beginning of my empowerment,
because I knew I had to learn how
to speak up.”
Her experiences also led her to
believe that people who think they
know what they want to do should go
to that place and see the work being
done, and to get a feel for the field.
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SHE DIDN’T LISTEN TO
NAYSAYERS WHEN PICKING
HER SPECIALTY.
“Back in medical school, I went
after what I loved,” she says. “It was
like solving a mystery to me, being
able to look at a picture and come up
with a diagnosis based upon what I
was seeing. When I was in medical
school, a lot of people would say,
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