Barbara Moss, DO, MPH
Kansas City University of Medicine and Bioscience
MPH, Boston University School of Public Health
Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency
My nephew called recently. He was excited to share the news that he’d just been accepted to medical school. I did congratulate him and take a breath before I launched into the discussion of specialty choice. As a family practitioner, I am glad for those who choose other specialties and sub-specialties as my patients will need their perspective and specific skill set. But I shared with him why I chose family medicine and how very rewarding and remarkable I find just about every day of practice. I love the variety of problems my patients present to me, I love the variety of patients that come to see me, I love delivering babies and I love seeing elders, I love procedures like removing toenails and I love performing osteopathic manipulation. All told, being a “toes to nose, womb to tomb” family doc is exactly how I want to spend my days. At the end of our conversation, my nephew said to me “Aunt Barbara, whatever specialty I choose, I sure hope I can enjoy my work as much as you enjoy yours”.
Prior to attending medical school, I ran with an Advanced Life Support ambulance and worked training EMTs in far flung villages in Alaska. Between calls, I helped out at the clinic. I performed as a radiology tech, drew labs, started IV lines and administered chemo therapy. One of the rural family docs was an Osteopathic physician and he began a conversation that continues to this day.
As an osteopathic physician, I have such gratitude and respect for the body’s inherent capacity to heal itself. While I enjoy the practice of manipulation and am specialty boarded in Neuromuscular Medicine, the osteopathic principals are what I continue to encourage in my practice and in my patients. While the outward expression of disease can grab our clinical attention, it is the health within that I choose to encounter.
I have been the fortunate recipient of incredible education. I attended the Brearley School in Manhattan, Phillips Exeter Academy, Barnard College of Columbia University, Boston University’s School of Public Health, Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences and the Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency. I have been surrounded by students who have striven for excellence and shared their excitement in the process of learning. While it was a difficult choice to leave my rural family practice of four years in Coopers Mills, Maine, being involved in an academic environment and the creative opportunities that the educational environment inspires has been exhilarating.
Now I’m living off the grid in the middle of an 800 acre nature preserve with a spring fed lake for sweet water swimming. During the summers we sleep in the open air on our sleeping porch and in the winter I can cross country ski out my back door for hours. My husband and two children and I can eat out of our own garden. I am truly blessed to live this bountiful rural life and be engaged in work that is meaningful.