As a general surgeon, I was looking to find a career that not only allows the ability to perform meaningful work and procedures, but also a life outside of medicine. The ability to be there for my family and children is important to me. In addition, I wanted to get back to enjoying many of the hobbies, I abandoned, to pursue my dream of becoming a physician. At SWC we want to help all our physicians live a quality life while also pursuing their passion. We are always looking to improve our physicians' work experience. We talk to our physicians about how we can help them with any personal life goals. Whether it is health and wellness, achieving peace of mind, or taking a vacation, we believe that physicians deserve to be taken care of. We take care of our physicians so they can take care of their patients. 

It was 1994, in college at UCLA; when I woke up at 4 AM, to drive to a remote village in Mexico with some fellow students and faculty advisors to provide a rural health clinic. We drove across the border to a village in Baja California called La Rumarosa (about halfway between Tecate and Mexicali). This was a deeply powerful experience, and I volunteered throughout college with this group - the Flying Samaritans. Helping people gain access to the care they needed (but couldn’t always get to themselves) became an early passion.

I was a staff general surgeon in a Los Angeles hospital, and I remember waiting in the operating lounge for my next laparoscopic cholecystectomy to begin. It occurred to me that there was a group of people in a nursing home right across the street who were, in their own way, underserved in the area of wound care. At that time - 2007 - nursing home wound care patients were an almost entirely unserved population, but I thought I might be able to help. I started helping out, and I remember my first major breakthrough: I had a patient named Mr “Rivera,” (name changed for privacy reasons) who had a large wound on his sacrum but couldn’t leave the facility to get the treatment he needed. I figured, if he can’t leave the facility, maybe we can help him right here. I decided to try performing bedside debridements to clean and freshen his wound, and I was thrilled to see it respond. Every week, I came to check on Mr. Rivera, and before long, his wound had rapidly improved. I started getting calls to look at other patients, and at other facilities, to help with their wounds, and that’s how the Skilled Wound Care practice started.