"Piloting the Journey": Dr. Kitty Carter-Wicker on Empathy, Medicine and Making Family Proud
MSM Professor of Family Medicine and AUCC Student Health and Wellness Center Medical Director Dr. Kitty Carter-Wicker spoke with "Closer Look" host Rose Scott on WABE.
By LaShawn Hudson, WABE
Dr. Kitty Carter-Wicker is passionate about her life's work. She takes pride in serving her community and partnering with her patients to achieve their best health. For more than 30 years, the Southwest Atlanta native has been practicing family medicine. As a young girl, she says she watched her late grandmother, Kitty, take care of elderly neighbors in their community. This had a profound impact on Carter-Wicker's life and inspired her to become a doctor.
"I was named after my grandmother," explained Dr. Carter-Wicker. "And I never ever wanted to hear her say, 'I am ashamed of you having my name.' So my whole life has been trying to make my mother and my grandmother proud of me. I never wanted to embarrass them, and that's why I'm sitting here today as Dr. Kitty Carter-Wicker."
The Morehouse School of Medicine alum is currently a professor of family medicine at her alma mater and serves as the medical director of the Atlanta University Center Consortium Student Health and Wellness Center.
For the "Closer Look" Women's History Month series, "Piloting the Journey," Dr. Carter-Wicker reflected on navigating medical school as a young parent as well as the ups and downs of her more than three-decade career in the medical field, which is also detailed in her memoir, "Ain't Gonna Let No Baby Turn Me 'Round."
During the conversation with "Closer Look" host Rose Scott, Dr. Carter-Wicker also explained why one of the greatest life lessons she learned over the course of her career is empathy and discussed her top goal as she gears up for retirement.
"What we are trying to do now, a big initiative, is I want to leave the Student Health and Wellness Center in a better position than when I started," said Dr. Carter-Wicker. "We want that clinic to become accredited, and we are doing things so that before I retire, and I should say this, I will not retire until that clinic is accredited."