Facility Oakland Medical Center Pediatric Hospitalists Address 280 W. MacArthur Blvd. Main Hospital Building 10th floor Oakland CA 94611 Map & Directions E-mail your doctor View your preventive services

Welcome to Kaiser Oakland. I am a pediatric hospitalist, which means that instead of taking care of children in an office or clinic, I only take care of babies, children and adolescents while they are being cared for in the hospital. I have been a hospitalist since I finished my residency in 1992. I love my work, and feel very privileged to serve children and families in this way.

If you are reading about me that probably means that your child needs to be cared for in the hospital. This can be a deeply stressful time, and I want you to know that if I am helping to take care of your child, I will work with you to keep you informed at all times and to ease your stress as much as possible.

My goal is to help provide and arrange for the best medical care achievable for your child. And caring for and protecting your child means we have to take care of you too.

Why does caring for a child mean caring for the entire family? As a medical team, we will be responsible for managing the medical problems affecting your child. However, we cannot know as much about your child’s emotional life as you, the child’s parent/caregiver. You will have an active role in reassuring, supporting and loving your child through a process most children experience as scary, sometimes painful, and often out of their control.

Here are some of my beliefs about how this works:

• You are an invaluable part of the team caring for your child. We cannot replace what you do as parents/caregivers for your child. Your support, reassurance, and love are so important during a hospitalization.

• The more you are involved with the medical team in making decisions for your child’s health, the more those decisions will reflect the unique qualities of your child, and as much as possible, those decisions can also reflect the preferences and traditions of your family.

• I will try to keep you informed about your child’s medical condition, because I believe that the more you know about your child’s condition and the concerns of the medical team, the more wholeheartedly you can support your child as he or she passes through this difficult experience. This also puts you in a better position to support the care your child may need.

• Except in emergency situations, we do not do anything without your consent.

Finally, our care is not complete until you have had an opportunity to ask all your questions and discuss all of your concerns with us. If you have any questions or concerns, I encourage you to check in with the hospitalist on duty.

Thank you for the privilege of allowing me to help in caring for your child.

My Credentials

Medical school	Keck School of Medicine of The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Residency	Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, CA
Board certification	Pediatrics, American Board of Pediatrics

Professional Affiliation/Interests

I serve as Co-Chair of the Committee on Environmental Health for the Northern California Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. I am deeply interested in protecting children from environmental hazards, like industrial chemicals and second-hand smoke.

I have also had the privilege of volunteering with several nonprofit organizations that are doing wonderful work to improve health conditions within the US and overseas. These include the Hesperian Foundation which develops manuals such as “Where There is No Doctor” to help poor and underserved communities around the world achieve better health when there is limited or no access to a doctor.

I am on the steering committee of the Bay Area Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Our goals include reducing the devastating effects of gun violence in this country, advocating for peace, and protecting communities from environmental hazards.

Disclaimer
If you think you have a MEDICAL OR PSYCHIATRIC EMERGENCY, CALL 911 IMMEDIATELY or go to the nearest hospital. DO NOT attempt to access emergency care through this web site. An emergency medical condition is a medical or psychiatric condition that manifests itself by acute symptoms of sufficient severity (including severe pain) such that you could reasonably expect the absence of immediate medical attention to result in any of the following: serious jeopardy to your health, serious impairment to your bodily functions, or serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part. An emergency medical condition is also "active labor," which means a labor when there is inadequate time for safe transfer to a Plan hospital (or designated hospital) before delivery or if a transfer poses a threat to the health of the member or unborn child.

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