NECESSARY PHOENIX: WORKING TOGETHER TO HELP HEAL THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE
After she completed medical school in 1983 at Tulane and Charity Hospital of New Orleans, Alice Keys embarked upon a neurology training program. She decided to do the required psychiatry rotations first to “get them out of the way”. She was fascinated by neuroanatomy and physiology and considered psychiatry too “soft” a branch of medicine for her taste. But she came home at the end of each day with a smile. It was fun for her to work on the locked psychiatric unit. She loved her patients. She changed over to the psychiatry program, a “biopsychosocial” program with strong psychotherapy elements. When Alice moved from New Orleans to Portland to complete her training, she found herself unexpectedly immersed in a pharmacologic program at a hospital that locals call “Pill Hill.” After residency, she worked two years on a locked inpatient unit before going off into a suburban private practice and outpatient community mental health work. she closed my private practice in 2003. For the past eight years she has spent my professional time working for non-profit agencies in the care of her most vulnerable neighbors.
