Ingram's October 2023

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NEAL ERICKSON St. Joseph Medical Center/Kansas City Family Medical Care This is a love story. “I absolutely love my career choice,” says family physician Neal Erickson. “Every day, I enjoy getting up and going to work. I love the diversity of the patients in my clinic. I see people from small towns out side of Kansas City, farms, suburbs, and the inner city. I see people of all ages and all walks of life. I love getting to know them and their stories and being part of their fam ilies. I truly believe I have an enormous family with all of my patients.” And that plays out in multiple venues: In the clinic at Kansas City Family Medical Care, at St. Jo seph Medical Center, at Elite Physicals, his firm providing comprehensive assessments for business executives, and at Sporting Kansas City, where Erickson has been a team

STEPHEN JARVIS UNIVERSITY HEALTH

“A bolt of lightning.” That’s how Stephen Jarvis describes the moment when, as a fine arts major at Washington Univer sity in St. Louis, he realized he wanted to be a doctor. His pur suit of a career in photography yielded to an instructor’s com ment that being a modern artist wasn’t what it used to be—that the craft required polymaths with the ability to see possibili ties where others didn’t, like doctors. “That’s when it clicked,” Jarvis says. “I wanted to be immersed in people’s lives and lifelong learning.” Medical school wasn’t going to happen at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities, which had a price tag to match its reputation. “So I went to Southeast Mis souri State, with tuition of $150 a semester, and hit the books,” he says. That was the first step in a journey that led him to a

physician since 1995. “It was a matter of right place, right time,” he says. The CEO at that time knew the value of mar keting and helped steer Erick son to the team. “It was a way to get new patients to grow my practice.” In addition, he says, he gets to work with in ternal specialists and helped create guidelines for head and heart injury and health. Now, he’s looking for his opportu nity to engage with the FIFA

career in psychiatry, practicing at University Health in Kansas City. Brief consideration of inter nal medicine and infectious dis eases quickly took a seat while on his rotations. “I did psychiatry and fell in love in a way I never expected,” he said. The practice at that time wasn’t a popular choice for residents, “but I just loved it. I got to be a part of people’s lives in a way I never could with the other rotations. You would have some interaction

World Cup medical team when the competition reaches Kansas City in 2026. With a solid Kansas City upbringing— Shawnee Mission East High School, KU for undergraduate, and then medical school and residency, “I always knew I would want to stay in Kansas City,” he says. “My family has been here our whole life, and my wife and her family are also from here. I knew we would be staying in town.” High-school aptitude tests suggested a proficiency in the sciences, which prompted Erickson’s father to suggest a number of professional tracks, including physician. Early on, primary care had a strong appeal; deciding between family practice and pediatrics was tougher. Then came his final rotation in med school, in family medicine. “That put everything together for me,” Erickson says “I was able to do a little bit of everything: medicine, surgery, pediatrics, OB/GYN, psychiatry. Then I knew that family medicine was my career path.” Even with so many irons in the health care fire, Erickson is finding new ways to make an impact. Elite Physicals, he says, is partnering with War Horses for Veterans to provide services to U.S. Special Forces sol diers who come to Kansas City for a program to help them with their post-traumatic stress. “We have a very exciting program and are showing great early success,” he says, so much so that they are now building a clinic/retreat in the Stanley area of southern Johnson County.

with people there, but then they’d be gone; psychiatry was so bound up with people in their lives. It felt very gratifying. I’m still not good at being a polymath, but I got something out of that wish.” After a residency stint in Pittsburgh, he ended up back in Missouri “by accident and fate,” he says. Though he preferred the Steel City, his wife wanted to come back clos er to their Missouri roots, and he signed on with Heartland Health in St. Joseph, now Mosaic Life Care. “I ended up be ing the only psychiatrist for some people hundreds of miles away and working 100-plus hours a week.” More than 20 years ago, Truman Medical Centers, now University Health, offered a chance for a more balanced life and career. “This allowed me and my colleagues to work with people in the way we need to, to give a lot of support,” Jarvis says. “There are a lot of ill, poor people who end up homeless, in jail, in despair. I could never give them what they need alone, but at University Health, we have case workers, counselors, outreach and housing people, and so many other resources. It’s very gratifying.” Stresses across the population since the onset of the pandemic have added to his workload. “We certainly saw a lot of that, though it has died down somewhat,” Jarvis says. “Still, you had people who lost loved ones, who lost their jobs, who may have lost their homes—we saw a lot of people in distress. And a lot of internal people, here on the staff, got COVID as well, long-term cases of it, stress on their own families. We saw a lot of people with depression and financial anxieties.”

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October 2023

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