Apr. 20--At St. Joseph Medical Center Community Campus, Sixth and Walnut streets, nurse Valerie Hains began praising a certain doctor as "compassionate, caring and deserving of every recognition she gets."
About a half-hour later, another doctor, Accamma Joy, described the same colleague as "someone who knows how to be a mother, a doctor and a friend."
Twice, the doctor being extolled blushed and left the room.
"She is not one to toot her own horn," wrote Pamela Taffera, a St. Joseph family practice resident, one of those who nominated the doctor for 2010 Osteopathic Family Medicine Educator of the Year, a national award.
The award-winner is Dr. Margaret Mary Wilkins, 49, Exeter Township, a family practice doctor and chairwoman of the Department of Family Medicine at St. Joseph. She also directs the center's Family Practice Residency Program.
This year, she was elected president of the Berks County Medical Society.
One might assume, because of her modesty, that Wilkins might subscribe to the motto, "What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas."
It was there that she received the award from the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians at a convention in March in the Palazzo Hotel, attended by about 1,000 of her peers.
But word gets around, and Wilkins, standing in front of a bulletin board filled with photographs of her young residents, tries to take all the adulation in stride.
"This is just what I do ... ," said Wilkins, whose mother and aunt, both nurses, served as sources of inspiration for her to enter the medical profession.
"I saw their passion for medicine, but also their frustration of not always being able to do what they wanted to do," Wilkins said.
Wilkins became a doctor of osteopathy, and these days many of those who work with her aff ectionately call her "The Evangelist" for her commitment to promoting family medicine. And that is her mission, the timing never more perfect with the passage of health care reform and a soonto-be growing demand for primary care.
"I believe family medicine is in crisis and too many institutions cannot fill family medicine residency slots," she said.
She is doing her best to address that complex issue.
In the meantime, she is an adjunct professor of family medicine at Philadelphia Osteopathic College and a day-to-day inspiration to family medicine interns and residents.
Most importantly, perhaps, this doctor and mother raised three sons: a U.S. Navy ensign, a music therapist and a geology major in college.
By way of explaining such an eclectic career mix among her boys, she said, "I think I allowed them to explore the things that are important to them."
And that's quite an ability -- an essential one for any good parent, doctor and friend.
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