New Doctor joins Pentucket Medical

"New Doctor joins Pentucket Medical"

Written by Bill Donovan
Georgetown Record
December 08, 2012

Primary care physician Colleen Collins has seen it all. Over the past 25 years she's traversed the globe, practicing medicine in such exotic locales as the Philippines, rural China, and at a New Mexican Navajo Indian reservation. This month Dr. Collins treads a new path with her new position at Pentucket Medical in Georgetown. The Yale Medical School graduate started last week and looks to put patients' needs first.

"Doctors want to focus on the patient. Today there are many pressures that chip away at this focus: insurance pressures, note-taking pressures - I believe Pentucket Medical is set up in a way that minimizes these distractions and enables physicians to do what they love: caring for the patient," said Dr. Collins. "People always look at credentials. I have credentials, but what also counts is having the ears to hear the patient's story. Only then can treatment begin."

Collins was impressed with Pentucket Medical's support for their practitioners and treatment with patients. She said the ongoing primary care crisis is pushing doctors into scenarios where they are wearing too many hats. Some patients lack a sense of the correct direction with healthcare and feel lost. Collins seeks to fill this gap.

"I hope I can provide good preventive care to folks who lack primary care as well as to those who've retired or moved away and had a hard time," explained the doctor.

"This is a great opportunity to work with other great doctors like Mary Schwartz and also get back to my roots with direct patient care."

The Lexington native's roots stretch back to her time overseas in The Philippines during college in the mid-1980s. On the island of Panay she encountered some challenges with an internship. "I worked in a rural third-world tropical hospital and there were times when we had to beg for sutures," explained Collins.

"I learned so many different procedures, including how to deliver babies and perform appendectomies. This was all during the People Power Revolution when the country deposed then president Ferdinand Marcos." Collins came back to the states with the knowledge and experiences gathered along her journey.

After graduation from Yale, she started her first full-time job in 1990 out West in the Four Corners region of New Mexico at the Navajo Indian Reservation. "I took care of patients with alcohol and substance abuse as well as diabetes and nutritional problems for three years. The ability to provide direct care was available there."

In 1993 she returned to New England for primary care work at Mass General Hospital. Collins taught during her ten years there, becoming Medical Director for the Suffolk County House of Corrections in 2003. She was responsible for 600-800 inmates and staffing for all the practitioners. "It was pretty high stress," stated the doctor.

"This new job will be very different from the huge hospital complex setting. Patients can feel kind of overwhelmed in that sort of setting."

The new doctor is in.

Collins is welcoming new primary care patients. To book an appointment, please call 978-352-8375.
 

Read more: New doctor joins Pentucket Medical - Georgetown, MA - Georgetown Record http://www.wickedlocal.com/georgetown/news/x1665845041/New-doctor-joins-Pentucket-Medical#ixzz2EU2qLr1r