Interviewee: Denise Beach Davis DPM

Current Position: Podiatric Surgeon for Denise A. Beach DPM PC

Education: BS for Health Science and Policy as well as being Pre-Med at UMBC and went to Medical School at Temple University

Inspiration to go into her field: She has always wanted to be a doctor since she was about 5 years old. Even though she is a podiatrist now, she wanted to be a pediatrician. In college, she was even able to live with a pediatrician for about a month and basically live her life. She woke up with her, ate when she ate, went to sleep when she slept, etc. She realized that it was not her lifestyle because she wanted to have a family and do things outside of work, so she decided she did not want to be a pediatrician. She attended a March for Dimes seminar and met a podiatrist that told her she should think about pediatric podiatry. She was hesitant because she was like feet? Then he told her how podiatry is a very male-dominated, but specifically white Jewish male-dominated practice and there are not many woman podiatrists, especially African American. That pushed her to want to become one more, to be one against the odds. She ended up changing from pediatric podiatry to surgical podiatry.

Basic Roles and Responsibilities: While she is still a doctor and surgeon, she is also still a business owner. On the doctor side, she does triages, diagnosing and treatment of patients, charting and documentation, and making sure that everyone is being safe, and everyone is healthy. On the business owner side, she has to maintain the practice, manage the staff to make sure them know their roles and responsibilities as well. She discusses regulatory and compliance information with patients and her employees. She also has to do payroll since she is the owner of her practice and has employees working for her.

Most Rewarding Aspect of the Job: She said that the most rewarding part of the job is being able to help people who wouldn’t be able to walk into the office. She has a saying that she uses in her practice and it is “They walk in limping and walk out pimping”.

Most Challenging Aspect of the Job: She said that the most challenging part of the job has to do with the administrative side rather than the patient care side. Insurance policies and patients’ premiums are changing all the time and it makes it hard for patients to get treatments and not have to spend an arm and a leg for it. Regulations and guidelines are also changing and all of the people who make these regulation and insurance changes are making their decisions on the business side and are not thinking about the patients’ needs. She believes that they are hurting patients more than aiding them.

Advice for someone going into the health field: The advice that she gave was when she shadowed with the pediatrician, she realized that not all pediatricians care only about their job. She suggested that you shadow as many people in the different areas you are interested in. You can take away what to do from one person and learn what not to do from another person. It allows you to get the true visual of what could come in the future.

The takeaway from the Interview: What I took from the interview is that sometimes life doesn’t go as planned, but it will always come back if you work hard. Dr. Beach-Davis worked hard for where she is and not only is she an African American female in a predominately white profession, she owns her own podiatry practice. She is the definition of a hard worker. She really made me think when she said I should shadow someone in my desired profession to see if it is for me. I never thought about living with let’s say a trauma nurse and going through her everyday life with her as if I am the trauma nurse but I might look into that. She taught me a lot about making sure I research and do things to make sure that is what I want to pursue in life.