Susan S. Schommer, MD General Surgeon

Dr. Susan Schommer enjoying a hike with her son-in-law.

After completing my BA in Biology in 1973, I joined the Peace Corps and spent 4 years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, teaching high school math and science (in French) and volunteering at a local hospital.  There I met my husband, a Frenchman. We subsequently moved to the US when I began medical school at Case Western Reserve University. My daughter was born 7 months before I began my general surgery residency. Unfortunately, my husband died of leukemia when my daughter was just 15 months old, so I had no more children.

After completing general surgery residency in Cleveland, I began solo practice in a semirural county just outside of Cleveland. Our hospital served patients from small towns and family farms, including  a large Amish population in the county.

When my daughter graduated from high school and decided to attend college in California, I found myself home alone with no family nearby. I therefore sold everything in Ohio, bought a home on the central coast of California, and began working as a locum tenens general surgeon. Having been a Peace Corps volunteer in small villages in Africa, and having practiced in an area with many rural patients, it was natural for me to continue working with people in rather remote areas. I spent several years working at four different hospitals on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. Other jobs have taken me to rural areas where many of the people tend to be poor, from rural northern California to rural Ohio and rural New Mexico. Rural areas tend to have a hard time recruiting and retaining surgeons. The one city that I worked in was Cairns, Australia, but while there I also traveled to outlying rural hospitals to do clinics and basic operative procedures. The operating room on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait has a large picture window with a beautiful view of the ocean!

Currently I am working on the island of Kauai. 

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