Willow Glen Resident
Community
Photograph by Zach Beecher
Passionate about People: Catherine Albin of Willow Glen is Kaiser Permanente's chief of pediatrics. She was recently recognized for her work by the Santa Clara County Medical Association with its Outstanding Contribution in Medical Education award.
Longtime doctor Albin honored for contributions by her peers
By Mayra Flores De Marcotte
For Willow Glen resident Catherine Albin, the lines between teacher and student are blurred, and that is exactly how Albin likes it.
"There isn't a true transition," says Albin, Kaiser Permanente chief of pediatrics. "Being a teacher is also being a student. You are in an environment where you need to learn every day. It's like a conversation that starts and never ends."
Over 24 years, Albin has trained hundreds of Bay Area physicians.
"She is a truly hard-working force for good in the medical center," says Karl Sonkin, regional media relations specialist for Kaiser Permanente Northern California. "She is possibly the best."
For this and her passion for education, the Santa Clara County Medical Association has honored Albin with its Outstanding Contribution in Medical Education award.
"She's doing great things in pediatrics," Sonkin says. "She's a bit of a trailblazer."
The award caught Albin off guard.
"It was a total surprise," Albin says. "I had no idea that I had even been nominated."
She says that her job is so intrinsically part of her persona and so much fun to do that she would do it regardless of whether there was recognition.
"I see it as a cumulative award," she says. "This kind of award honors my friendship with the many physicians I know as well."
A graduate of Santa Clara University, Albin received her medical training at Stanford University. She has held a number of increasingly high-level pediatrics leadership roles at Santa Clara County Valley Medical Center.
"It was an environment that I loved," Albin says. "Fabulous people, fabulous patients and very interesting medicine. It was part of the academic environment I grew up in."
Albin tries to re-create this environment everywhere she works, instilling the idea that the more physicians learn, the more of a difference they can make.
At Kaiser, Albin established a twice-weekly grand rounds program in the Department of Pediatrics, as a teaching tool for her staff.
The program is essentially a formal lecture, where a physician outlines historical, current and future issues about a given condition or medical procedure to other physicians, residents and interns, Albin says.
It is in these sessions that established physicians and those still honing their skills learn the latest about medical advances.
"It's that ability to look at medicine and share that interesting aspect with a whole group of people," she says. "I would be very lonely if I were by myself in a practice. Teaching isn't about knowing it all; it's about figuring out the answer."
Her job is to give residents, physicians and interns alike the resources needed to grow in their profession.
"I want people to become teachers themselves," Albin says. "I want them to review something in a way that increases our knowledge."
Changing the way in which we learn by continuing to be students is her highest priority.
"Even if it's not new research or fabulous bits of innovating technology, it's all an important part of the lifelong learning curve," Albin says. "Many young physicians tell me that they want a job just like mine. It's an incredible job. I tell them that it's never easy, but never boring."
