Specialty Emergency Medicine Facility Sacramento Medical Center Department of Emergency Medicine Address 2025 Morse Avenue Sacramento CA 95825 Map & Directions Telephone (916) 973-6600 E-mail your doctor

My singular goal in life is to be an expression of compassion in everything that I do, say or think. It is this intention that guides me, and drives everything I do. It is this goal that sustains me.

I have been interested in being a doctor from my earliest memories. When I was younger, I identified this interest with wanting to help people. As I’ve gotten older and clear on exactly who I want to be in life, I’ve discovered that practicing medicine is the perfect career to manifest compassion with people. Being a physician has turned out to be a perfect career for me. I love what I do.

I was born in Colombia, South America, and came to this country at the age of 4. I grew up in New York City, and completed medical school and an Emergency Medicine residency there. Emergency Medicine doctors are trained to diagnose and treat emergency medical conditions of all kinds – including medical, surgical, traumatic, pediatric, gynecologic and more. This means that all of my clinical work is done in the Emergency Department.

I chose emergency medicine for many reasons – the excitement of not knowing what may come through the Emergency Department doors next; the challenge of establishing effective communication and gaining trust with people in a short period of time; the opportunity to help people in crisis; and many more. After 12 years of practicing emergency medicine, I still enjoy all of those things, but I have also found that one of my greatest satisfactions now comes from teaching and motivating patients to take better care of themselves. I believe that how illness affects us depends very much on our own attitude towards that illness. The more we learn about our own illness, the more we as patients participate in our own care, then the more we will live a healthy and effective life with whatever illness we have, and the less the illness itself will “win” over us. I have learned this not from being a doctor, but from being a patient. I have lived with rheumatoid arthritis for over 14 years, and it has helped me learn much about myself, about being a patient, and about being a doctor. So, in my practice of Emergency Medicine I treat emergency conditions when they come up, but I also try to motivate and teach patients to better care for themselves when they are not in crisis.

My interests in applying my medical training outside of the hospital have led me to become involved with disaster medical relief, and with wilderness medicine. I have participated as a member of an Urban Search and Rescue team in disaster responses to the Oklahoma City bombing, the World Trade Center bombing, 5 separate hurricane deployments, and various in-state California disasters. I also direct medical courses to train paramedics and doctors to work in disaster situations.

My personal interests revolve largely around my family and the outdoors. The lion’s share of my personal time is spent with my three children, and we spend as much of it as possible skiing, camping, hiking, biking, and climbing.

Thank you for taking the time to read a little about me. I firmly believe that Kaiser’s mission is to provide excellent quality medical care. I am proud to be part of that process. But we can’t do it without the interest, and participation of our members. Thank you.

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My Credentials

Medical school	New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY
Internship	St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center, New York, NY
Residency	Long Island Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park, NY
Board certification	Emergency Medicine, American Board of Emergency Medicine

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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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