Dr.
Catherine N. Smoot-Haselnus never thought twice about what she wanted to be
when she grew up. Her father, Aubrey Smoot Jr., was a physician, so was her
grandfather and her uncle. “I think it was just the genetic predisposition,”
says Dr. Smoot-Haselnus, who is 45, and graduated from the medical school
in 1985. “It was just seeing dad, the love of medicine, the love of patients.
It just left a mark. I knew forever that is all I wanted to do.”
Dr. Smoot-Haselnus has come a long way since she was a young girl. She is
an ophthalmologist with a thriving practice on Maryland’s Eastern Shore,
and on Sept. 8, she became president-elect of the Maryland State Medical
Society. Dr. Smoot-Haselnus will become president of the organization next
September. “That was such an honor and such a high to be elected by my
peers,” she says.
She was also the first woman to become president-elect of the 202-year-old
organization. “I don’t look at it because of the fact that I am
a woman,” she says. “I am a forthright, outspoken person . . . passionate
about the profession of medicine. A commitment to organized medicine is the
only true way to effect change to benefit patients and physicians.”
An issue that she is concerned about is patient safety. She plans to work
with the Maryland legislature to help develop a health care system that not
only identifies problems, but corrects them quickly and efficiently. “That
is one of the largest issues with which MedChi is working,” she says.
Dr. Smoot-Haselnus grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in Salisbury,
and was the oldest of five children. While she was in junior high school,
she became something of an understudy to her father, a 1952 graduate of Maryland.
He took her on hospital rounds and to his office on weekends where she helped
organize files. “I don’t think I ever had any idea of wanting to
do something else,” Dr. Smoot-Haselnus says.
She
wasted little time pursuing a career in medicine. After graduating from Western
Maryland College with a degree in biology in 1977, Dr. Smoot-Haselnus earned
a master’s degree in microbiology at the University of Maryland in Baltimore
three years later. In 1985, she graduated from the medical school and completed
an internship in internal medicine at the Medical Center of Delaware in 1986.
She finished her residency at the Albany Medical Center in ophthalmology in
1989, and was named chief resident that year. From 1989 to 1990, she was a
visiting fellow at Moorefield’s Eye Hospital in London, England. When
she returned to the U.S. in 1990, she opened a practice on the Eastern Shore,
and business has been booming! She works out of her father’s former office
in Salisbury, and she has a second office in Berlin, about five miles west
of Ocean City.
Most days she starts at 8 a.m., takes a 15-minute lunch break and works until
5:30 or 6 p.m. Her husband, Ronald Haselnus, who has a background in insurance
and a master’s degree in health care administration, is the practice
administrator.
She enjoys her work because she cares for a variety of patients, from newborns
to the elderly. She also operates and sometimes discovers patients with breast
cancer, diabetes, thyroid disease, depression or melanoma. “I can see
diseases at the vascular level,” she says. “I have the opportunity
to profoundly make a difference in somebody’s life. It is an amazing
specialty. It is absolutely like the summary of medicine. I love it.”
Dr. Smoot-Haselnus recalls advice that her father, (a retired ENT specialist)
who lives in Salisbury, once gave her: “Just take care of your patients,
and everything else will follow.”