Michael E. Clark, MD
Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest
Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency
Mike is the former Medical Director of Maine-Dartmouth FP, our Fairfield clinic site. He remains very active in our practice change and improvement process and is now responsible for our pending EMR upgrade in 2011.
I was born in the middle of the cold war, into a dysfunctional family, the product of a teen pregnancy. I spent my formative years on the ball fields of Hubbardston, a small working class town in central Massachusetts where ambitious children hoped for the opportunity to join their fathers at work in the local backhoe factory. I attended Colby College where I met and later married Ann Rhinehardt, the only other poor person to graduate from that esteemed institution during the opulent 80's. After graduation, both Ann and I began graduate school at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. After two years of psychological torture by a paranoid advisor, we both fled with Master's degrees in molecular genetics. A short trip down the Mass turnpike in our yellow VW bug deposited us in Boston, where I did GI research at BU for two years. Later, I did AIDS research at Duke, and then began medical school at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University. In medical school, I tried hard to convince myself that I would enjoy life as a radiation oncologist. Unfortunately a 40 hour work week and more money than I could possibly spend just couldn't compensate for the fact that I thought a "real" doctor should be able to treat an ear ache. Thus I began my career as a family physician. The highlight of our time in Winston-Salem was the birth of our oldest son Jackson.
It was with great excitement that I learned that I would be attending the Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency. At last we would be returning to Maine! I looked forward to joining the eclectic group of residents, faculty and staff that comprised the FMI. I enjoyed my time as a resident so much that I chose never to leave. Upon completion of residency I was given the opportunity to join Cathy Morrow in a tiny practice on the edge of Somerset County, and to become a member of the esteemed faculty at MDFMR. In the last 16+ years, that practice has grown into the health care giant that is Maine-Dartmouth Family Practice. What more could I ask for!
Ann and I now have three sons. Jackson is off to college and Graham and Evan are now teenagers. We spend much of our free time at our children's many activities. Soccer, which is now a year round activity thanks to a new indoor facility in Waterville, seems to take up most of our time. When not held hostage by our kids' busy lives, we enjoy the usual Maine pastimes: skiing, kayaking, hiking, and gardening.
In 2002 the entire family came with me to Hawera, New Zealand where I spent my sabbatical working as an ER physician. I had such a wonderful experience, that I returned to New Zealand for my next sabbatical in the winter of 2010. I worked as a GP in Thames on the Coramandel Peninsula. It was great working in a country that has a healthcare system.