Most young children don't have a clue about what they're going to do with their lives. But Rob Tenery did.
At the age of 5, he started tagging along with his father, a doctor in Waxahachie, Texas, as he made his rounds. By age 7, Tenery was spending more and more time in the laboratory with his father, and knew he was born to be a doctor.
Coming from a medically-oriented family, he says, "We talked medicine — it was our second language. The only career I ever really thought about seriously was medicine."
By observing and following his father (and grandfather, who started practicing medicine in 1909), Tenery learned that being a doctor involves much more than just what you know. It’s about the doctor-patient relationship.
"My father and grandfather always put the interests of their patients ahead of their own," Tenery says. "It had little to do with what they received in return. My father's patients always came first, and his day was never over until the last patient's concerns were resolved."
He also learned that the smartest doctors aren't necessarily the best doctors. "It’s the doctors who care about their patients, and the doctors who know their limitations, who are the best doctors."
"The essence of what it means to be a physician — a true physician — is part science, part art," Tenery says. "The science comes from medical school and subsequent training. The art, that sense of conviction and compassion, comes from within and is learned at the bedside of our patients and through the example of physicians of the past who were called to this noble profession."
Dr. Tenery believes the doctor-patient relationship is still personal, regardless of advancing technology and health-care reform. The physician's goal is to care for and about the patient and his family in a manner that is promoting healing and honoring the profession as a whole. "Physicians should never give their patients a reason to question the trust they have put in them," he says.
Getting creative
Tenery graduated from The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1968 and started his own practice in 1974. After his ophthalmology residency at Southwestern Medical School, he completed a fellowship in corneal transplants and diseases of the eye in San Antonio. Then Tenery began a two-year stint in the U.S. Army.
In 1984 he started writing a monthly column for the Dallas Medical Journal, and then from 1990 to 1998, he wrote one for the American Medical News. Through his experience as a columnist, he discovered a passion for writing.
At the prompting of his wife, Janet, with whom he had shared the lessons learned from his father and grandfather, Tenery began writing them down. Within five years, he completed the manuscript for Dr. Mayo's Boy: A Century of American Medicine. The book was published by Brown Books Publishing Group in January 2009.
While writing the book, Tenery discovered it was more than just a family history. The manuscript hit on a more universal topic — how health care has changed in the past century. It’s a timely subject as our country grapples with health-care reform.
Finding fulfillment
In some ways, medicine and writing are similar, says Tenery, in that in both cases, you want to be satisfied with the outcome — whether it’s helping a patient get well, or successfully writing the story you always wanted to tell.
That's why, at least for now, he's finding fulfillment in both professions. He gets up early in the morning and writes for a few hours before he starts seeing patients at 8:00.
To date, he has completed a total of five manuscripts — two of which are political thrillers. So once Dr. Mayo's Boy runs its course, he'll polish up another manuscript. As he says, "I have plenty of projects ahead of me."
While he continues to see the field of medicine changing at a breakneck speed, Tenery thinks that if young people feel a calling to medicine, they should follow that calling.
"I still feel like being able to take care of patients is the most important and fulfilling career that we could choose. And I still think we should think of it as a calling, as opposed to a vocation — more about what we do for people than what we get for what we do for people. There's a big difference."
Besides writing and practicing medicine, he also enjoys spending time with his family at his vacation home in Santa Fe, N.M.
Returning from their most recent trip, Dr. Tenery became a patient himself. Surviving cardiac surgery on a Monday, and neurosurgery on the following Saturday, his experience confirmed to him that medicine is "a group effort with a team of physicians, nurses, technicians, and family," he says, "with God's hand guiding the way." He also came to appreciate that patients are just that. "Anytime we begin to think of patients as customers, we lose the proper perspective."