The Making of A Doctor: An Interview with Dr. Lise Alexander

TC:  Where did you get your medical degree?

LA:  I received my medical degree (at the University of Washington). But I had to go back to school and get my prerequisite science credits down in Vancouver at Clark College. It was a community college. And then I also took some classes at Washington State University campus there. And I still had no idea if I was going to get into medical school. I was still frightened by the fact that I didn't think I was smart enough. But, I had to try. And it turned out I did well in the classes there, it reaffirmed my work, and as I dug deeper and deeper in the community and the healthcare issues I became more and more committed to it.

And I think, what was interesting about the process was becoming a doctor was important, but it wasn't going to be the end of the world for me if I didn't become a doctor. This was the path, helping people get healthy. And I just started down it. And that in itself was enough for me. And it kept me going. To this day I don't know why UW took me, other than maybe it was just my passion. You know, I was able to talk a lot about Indian health.

Everywhere I went, when I interviewed I could talk about Indian health and I usually knew more about Indian health than they did. And I just spoke as passionately as I could about it. I applied to five medical schools, all of which had some Native American health program in the medical school. That was a priority for me. I received interview invites to all five schools. I interviewed at three of them. And each one of them, I had, like, at least one bizarre interview experience. I interviewed at Minnesota, OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences U), and UW. And at OHSU I was interviewed by a pediatrician. He says, well, you know, I'm really concerned. We did this study about pediatricians, and they were all retiring early. And we had no old pediatricians. And so we did a study and we went back and we found out that a lot of them had retired because they got tired of taking care of healthy kids, that they lost that passion. And I'm concerned that you're going to experience that in family practice, that you're going to get tired of taking care of healthy people. And I said, "Let me tell you about Indian health." And I spent the next five or ten minutes talking about all the issues in Indian health and the things that we were struggling with. And at the end of the talk he said, "I don't think you'll ever be bored." And I said, "Yeah, I think there's a lot of work to be done."

And so that's basically the way the whole interview trail went was just explaining to people the issues in Indian health and what I saw I could do to make a difference, and how I would like to contribute. I was pretty driven and pretty focused as an applicant. Part of it was because I was older. I didn't have a whole lot of time to mess around. You know, I knew I was going to work in Indian country. I knew I was going to work in family practice. And within a short time after starting medical school I knew where I was going to do my residency. I just felt like my timeline didn't allow for a whole lot of experimentation. I needed to be really focused on where I was going and how I was going to get there. And a huge factor in that was age. And to this day I don't regret it. I think family medicine is a really good fit for me. And I feel like, once I accepted that pathway I accepted the fact that this was something I needed to work towards. It was like my whole life opened up. I started getting scholarships. I was able to start medical school with virtually no student loan debt.

TC:  You're lucky.

LA:  Yeah. Truly lucky. I had childcare support when I needed it. I had friends step in and help me for whatever I needed. Things started falling in my lap that I didn't even have to ask for them. It was, like, here you go. That's exactly what it felt like was, why did I wait so long to do this? And I don't regret it. I mean, I did things a little bit backwards compared to the dominant culture, but in our native culture women didn't become healers until after they were done childbearing, because it is such a demanding career. Even five hundred years ago, you know, taking care of the tribal members was not an easy job. And so, in a traditional sense, I'm actually coming to medicine at the exact right time for me. I'm done with raising my children just about, definitely done having children, and ready to begin my life's work.