Dr. Sontheimer is presently Professor and Vice-Chairman, Department of Dermatology and Richard and Adeline Fleischaker Chair in Dermatology Research at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
His prior clinical training in internal medicine and interest in rheumatology led him to develop a subspecialty focus in rheumatic skin diseases, especially the cutaneous manifestations of lupus erythematosus (LE) and dermatomyositis.
He has published more than 225 medical, scientific, and educational papers including a textbook, Cutaneous Manifestations of Rheumatic Diseases, co-edited with Dr. Thomas T. Provost.
Q. What part of your work gives you the most pleasure?
A. Being able to help a patient that other physicians have been unable to help. A career’s worth of curiosity and the protected time to allow it to mature functionally allowed me the opportunity of becoming a clinical subspecialist. Sharing the fruit of that labor with others in need makes my work also a pleasure. And doing this weekly with the brightest young people that U.S. medicine can produce at your side, hanging on every one of your words, is icing on the cake!
Q. What is the best piece of advice you have received and from whom?
A. Upon my becoming a new department chair, Bill Weston, someone whom I had always respected, gave me the following words of advice, “Be there and be fair.” However, I found that following that advice was not enough to sustain me in the hectic climate of modern academic healthcare management.
Q. Do you recall a memorable patient encounter and what you learned from it?
A. Before her identity was stolen by a particularly malignant melanoma, my most memorable patient had been the adored young wife and devoted mother of three small children. She became the most memorable of several patients who died under my care during my internal medicine internship at the University of Utah Medical Center. Having spent my medical school clinical clerkships in a large Southwestern public hospital, when I entered my internship year I was not fully familiar with juggling the lives of young people with whom I could so closely identify personally. We chased her mets and lost. I cried with her family when she died. That was the end of my professional innocence — I had become fully aware of the unacceptable inevitabilities that go along with real-life medicine.
Dr. Sontheimer is presently Professor and Vice-Chairman, Department of Dermatology and Richard and Adeline Fleischaker Chair in Dermatology Research at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
His prior clinical training in internal medicine and interest in rheumatology led him to develop a subspecialty focus in rheumatic skin diseases, especially the cutaneous manifestations of lupus erythematosus (LE) and dermatomyositis.
He has published more than 225 medical, scientific, and educational papers including a textbook, Cutaneous Manifestations of Rheumatic Diseases, co-edited with Dr. Thomas T. Provost.
Q. What part of your work gives you the most pleasure?
A. Being able to help a patient that other physicians have been unable to help. A career’s worth of curiosity and the protected time to allow it to mature functionally allowed me the opportunity of becoming a clinical subspecialist. Sharing the fruit of that labor with others in need makes my work also a pleasure. And doing this weekly with the brightest young people that U.S. medicine can produce at your side, hanging on every one of your words, is icing on the cake!
Q. What is the best piece of advice you have received and from whom?
A. Upon my becoming a new department chair, Bill Weston, someone whom I had always respected, gave me the following words of advice, “Be there and be fair.” However, I found that following that advice was not enough to sustain me in the hectic climate of modern academic healthcare management.
Q. Do you recall a memorable patient encounter and what you learned from it?
A. Before her identity was stolen by a particularly malignant melanoma, my most memorable patient had been the adored young wife and devoted mother of three small children. She became the most memorable of several patients who died under my care during my internal medicine internship at the University of Utah Medical Center. Having spent my medical school clinical clerkships in a large Southwestern public hospital, when I entered my internship year I was not fully familiar with juggling the lives of young people with whom I could so closely identify personally. We chased her mets and lost. I cried with her family when she died. That was the end of my professional innocence — I had become fully aware of the unacceptable inevitabilities that go along with real-life medicine.
Dr. Sontheimer is presently Professor and Vice-Chairman, Department of Dermatology and Richard and Adeline Fleischaker Chair in Dermatology Research at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
His prior clinical training in internal medicine and interest in rheumatology led him to develop a subspecialty focus in rheumatic skin diseases, especially the cutaneous manifestations of lupus erythematosus (LE) and dermatomyositis.
He has published more than 225 medical, scientific, and educational papers including a textbook, Cutaneous Manifestations of Rheumatic Diseases, co-edited with Dr. Thomas T. Provost.
Q. What part of your work gives you the most pleasure?
A. Being able to help a patient that other physicians have been unable to help. A career’s worth of curiosity and the protected time to allow it to mature functionally allowed me the opportunity of becoming a clinical subspecialist. Sharing the fruit of that labor with others in need makes my work also a pleasure. And doing this weekly with the brightest young people that U.S. medicine can produce at your side, hanging on every one of your words, is icing on the cake!
Q. What is the best piece of advice you have received and from whom?
A. Upon my becoming a new department chair, Bill Weston, someone whom I had always respected, gave me the following words of advice, “Be there and be fair.” However, I found that following that advice was not enough to sustain me in the hectic climate of modern academic healthcare management.
Q. Do you recall a memorable patient encounter and what you learned from it?
A. Before her identity was stolen by a particularly malignant melanoma, my most memorable patient had been the adored young wife and devoted mother of three small children. She became the most memorable of several patients who died under my care during my internal medicine internship at the University of Utah Medical Center. Having spent my medical school clinical clerkships in a large Southwestern public hospital, when I entered my internship year I was not fully familiar with juggling the lives of young people with whom I could so closely identify personally. We chased her mets and lost. I cried with her family when she died. That was the end of my professional innocence — I had become fully aware of the unacceptable inevitabilities that go along with real-life medicine.
