Dr. Pamela J. Sanders, MD, FAAFP

 

When people ask me where I am from, I don’t have a good answer.  I grew up in the farmlands of Western New York, but my family moved to Sparta, TN when I was 17, and my parents still reside in that community.  I attended Carson Newman College then married my husband, David, a few weeks after graduation.  The next four years were spent at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine, then I completed my Family Medicine residency at the University of Cincinnati.

For the first eight years of my career, I  practiced a broad scope of family medicine at a community health center in East Tennessee including outpatient practice, hospital work and obstetrics. I enjoyed this work immensely, but as we added children to our family and they began getting involved in activities, the time requirements of this scope of practice made balance difficult and I decided I needed to give up some parts of my practice to be able to do a good job as both a physician and as a mom.  With that in mind, my husband, four children and I moved to the Cookeville area which was closer to my family and allowed me to join Dr. Chet Gentry in a practice that eliminated the OB and hospital work. At the end of my year long contract there, I decided to start Seasons Family Medicine as a practice that is intentionally small and is modeled after the Ideal Medical Practice designed to minimize distractions and focus on the doctor-patient relationship that is foundational to quality primary care.

I initially chose Family Medicine because I enjoyed the variety and challenges that primary care offers.  With experience, however, I have found that I value the relationships that family medicine fosters even more.   I like caring for the entire family, from newborns to great-grandparents.  My own family is important to me as well, and my experience as a wife and as a mother to our four children has helped me immensely to understand and care for patients.  Experience has taught me the things that medical school couldn’t about focusing on the person first rather than seeing people as the complement of their diagnoses.

My interests outside of medicine generally revolve around my family — from swim meets to soccer games to camping trips.  I enjoy things like knitting, horseback riding, reading (for pleasure) and traveling, but more often than not end up with half-finished blankets, fat horses and books put aside in favor of medical journals!  Life is busy but good!