This doctor practices what he teaches: Dr. Prabhcharan Gill
+Maternal Fetal Medicine at Aultman Maternal-Fetal Medicine Center
+Director of Aultman Center for Advanced Medicine
+Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Northeast Ohio Medical University
For Dr. Prabhcharan Gill, practicing medicine is just one of his many responsibilities as a doctor.
The director of Maternal Fetal Medicine at Aultman Hospital also serves as the OBGYN curriculum director for Northeast Ohio Medical University and as a mentor who oversees the research activities at Aultman’s OBGYN Residency Program.
To be a balanced physician, Gill embraces clinical medicine, education and research at the same time.
“I love that Aultman has such an accomplished body of physicians that I get the opportunity to work with and, to this end, I’ve recently accepted the position of director of Aultman Center for Advanced Medicine (ACAM.) This will open an opportunity for me and the ACAM team to further enable our physician leaders to be relentless in our journey toward higher horizons of excellence,” he says. “It will help fully realize our over 100-year-old Aultman physician culture that has earned us the reputation that we have in the region.”
Even as a child, Gill knew that he wanted to be a physician.
“Being brought up in Kenya, I witnessed physicians making a real difference to the suffering of the ill,” he says.
He attended the University of Nairobi medical school and studied obstetrics and gynecology. He saw his mentors attend to obstetric chaos and come through with a live mother and child but he also remembers the doctors’ humility on those occasions where they didn’t prevail.
Later, he met his wife who endorsed his career choice (“Without her support, it’s a career I could not have pursued”), and they traveled to England. Gill trained to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and pursued the sub-specialty of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. After moving to the U.S., Gill did a research fellowship, another residency and a fellowship at the University of Washington before coming to Aultman.
When patients turn to Gill for help, he says the hope and trust he receives from them is a privilege but it’s also fulfilling and rewarding.
“The challenge that comes with it is very real,” he says. “It takes so little to falter. On that busy day, you can lose site of compassion and assume a role limited to decision-making and administering therapies and evaluations.”
Gill says social environments contribute to the health of women, and the adversity that generates ill health sometimes also leaves women “powerless, unengaged and not always optimally connected to the health care delivery system.”
“Physicians are limited in their ability to impact, for some women, their long-term health goals,” he says. “I believe all physicians should be social activists.”
In His Spare Time, You’ll Find Him:
• Staying Busy — “I love to spend time with my wife and children, chatting in cafes and browsing at bookstores. I don’t read novels as much as I’d like to but I’m working toward it! It’s also a special pleasure to visit museums and travel, and I do try to take my dog for a walk.”