Orofino doctor does it all

OROFINO — The opportunity to care for patients from birth to the end of life is what attracted Dr. Rebecca Katzman to family medicine.

That work, along with appreciation of her co-workers at Clearwater Valley Health and enjoyment of the community of Orofino, is what keeps her there.

“I wanted to do full-spectrum family practice and Idaho is one of the best places to do that,” Katzman said during a recent interview.

“There’s opportunities for family doctors to have a really broad scope of family practice, partly because there’s a need in some of the more rural areas where there just isn’t access to specialists. So being able to provide the front-line care for our patients and help them get connected with specialists when needed, that was really important to me.”

Katzman was recently named Idaho Family Physician of the Year by the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians. She practices full-spectrum rural family medicine at Clearwater Valley Health hospital and clinics and provides obstetrical and surgical obstetrics care, emergency department care and hospital medicine. Katzman was nominated for the award by Dr. Kelly McGrath, of Orofino, who said: “The deep caring wisdom and wit of Dr. Katzman stands as a shining example of what family medicine brings to our patients.”

Katzman was raised in Pennsylvania and New York and both of her parents were doctors. Following an undergraduate degree from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and medical school at Columbia University, Katzman did residency training in Boise and continued studying high-risk obstetric care in Seattle before moving to Orofino 6½ years ago.

During her residency, she spent one month in elective rotation training at Clearwater Valley Health and became familiar with the staff and community.

“I just really loved my time in Orofino,” Katzman said. “I loved the people that I worked with; it was a great community. Really excellent physicians and nurses and staff and it just seemed like the kind of place where I could do the type of work I was wanting to do.”

“And so when I was finishing up the residency program, I was looking at job options and connected back with Clearwater Valley Health and Orofino.”

Katzman said what appeals to her about family practice medicine is being able to get to know families and taking care of them through multiple generations.

She also appreciates being able to see patients in different venues, such as the clinic, the hospital or a nursing home.

“It’s taking care of people across the lifespan,” she said. “And being able to see a newborn in one visit and the next visit is seeing an elderly patient doing end-of-life planning. Those are both very fulfilling to me.”

Katzman is also sensitive to the often-limited medical options available to people in rural areas.

“I feel that access to health care is a necessary right to all people. And in areas where health care is harder to access, I thought it was important to try to be there and try to provide extra access for people,” she said.

That desire to be able to provide access to patients has been somewhat stymied during the past two years of COVID-19. One of the biggest challenges, Katzman said, was being able to find places where patients who needed a different level of care could be transferred because of the lack of bed space in regional hospitals and elsewhere.

It was also sometimes difficult dealing with patients who were skeptical or even dismissive of COVID-19 research and precautions.

“It’s something that we all saw and we all dealt with,” Katzman said. “I try to understand that there are a lot of people who were scared and uncertain of who to turn to. I think there was a glut of information, and sometimes misinformation, that could make it difficult to determine what the correct steps were. I think as a medical community here, we were just really committed to providing evidence-based care and following the best science that we had to help protect our community. And that was really our goal — protecting and taking care of our community.”

Although Clearwater County at times during the pandemic had some of the highest infection rates in north central Idaho, Katzman said currently there is a lull in COVID-19 cases.

“But we anticipate that we’re going to start seeing an influx of cases again.”

When she’s not taking care of patients, Katzman spends her time camping, hiking, running, reading and doing crossword puzzles.

“I think that’s a big appeal of being in a place like Orofino — the great access to the outdoors,” she said.

Katzman added that the Orofino medical community has set itself apart as being a destination for medical students and residents. Being able to create a teaching and learning environment is a significant boost to the entire community.

“That ongoing education, we really value, not only because it helps make those learners better doctors, but it makes us better doctors, too,” she said.

“And we think it really benefits our patients; having that push to make sure we’re staying on top of the most up-to-date and evidence-based care. Because that’s what we’re expected to provide to our patients and it’s also what we’re expected to teach our learners.”

Katzman said the recognition by the Academy of Idaho Physicians “is a huge honor to me — one that I don’t always feel is necessarily warranted for myself at this point in my career.”

“But I really see it as more of a reflection on all of the great doctors that I’ve trained with and learned from over the last few years and all of the people that I work with now.”

Hedberg may be contacted at khedberg@lmtribune.com.