Physician Profile:
Edwin H. Scott, M.D. of CPC-South
Family was a tremendous
influence on young Edwin Scott’s decision to become a physician. His father
is a country doctor, as was his grandfather, but it was Edwin’s choice
entirely. His decision was one born in part from exposure to the only life
he had ever known and perhaps, to some degree, from the same capacity for
compassion that drew his elders to this caring profession. “I don’t remember
a time in my life that I did not want to be a doctor,” he recalls.
Edwin was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, where his father was in medical
training, but the family soon returned to their roots just north of
Burlington, North Carolina, where the Scott clan had lived for generations.
Edwin enjoyed growing up in the countryside, which he says could be somewhat
remote but provided a lifestyle he grew to appreciate. As children, he and
his sister, Amy, spent a great deal of their time outdoors. Edwin’s
interests included hunting, playing basketball and football, and enjoying
the family’s horses. “We were isolated from our neighbors,” he says, but
only a few minutes’; walk to just about anywhere they wanted to go,
including his father’s medical office, which was next door to their home.
His father kept office hours 7 days a week until the last patient left each
day, sometimes as late as 9 p.m. Even after his father had locked up for the
evening, neighbors would sometimes come by the house, sick child in tow, to
see the doctor. “It was a hard life for them,” he says of his parents, Sam
and Connie. Edwin’s father was always on call. “There were no beepers or
answering services like there are today, and he was sometimes gone for days
making house calls.”
Another of the family’s strong influences on Edwin was their history with
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “I always wanted to go to
UNC,” he says. “My father and grandfather went there and so did many of my
aunts, uncles and cousins.” And so he did. Edwin finished his undergraduate
work in 1986 and remained at UNC for medical school. When he graduated in
1990, he moved from North Carolina to Augusta to begin his residency at the
Medical College of Georgia.
MCG was Edwin’s first choice for his residency. “I liked the faculty and a
close friend of mine lived in Augusta,” Edwin says. Only a year later, he
met his wife, Joy, a Carrollton, Georgia, native who was a nurse at MCG. In
August 1992, they married at the Old Medical College. Edwin and Joy now have
two daughters, Sarah and Rachel.
Variety was part of the reason Dr. Scott was drawn to family practice as a
specialty. “I like caring for the whole family, not just one person in the
family,” he explains. “I also like the family practice philosophy of
treating patients as people rather than just a collection of organs or
diseases.”
As a student, he had little interest in surgery, leaning more toward
pediatrics and medicine. He also was intrigued by psychology and psychiatry,
but did not realize until he became a family physician how important these
areas of patient care would be to his practice. “Depression in our society
is epidemic,” he says, because there are fewer support systems in place than
there were at one time. Families are broken apart by distance and divorce
and the world is a faster-paced, more stressful environment. “So many
physical ailments are born of misery and difficulties,” Dr. Scott says.
While there are varying degrees of psychological illness, some of which
require the care of a psychiatrist, he believes family physicians are able
to help many people suffering from anxiety, depression, and the physical
difficulties they can generate.
The
Scott Family onboard the Disney Magic
As much as he enjoys family medicine in general, he finds particular
pleasure in his practice group, the physicians of the Center for Primary
Care. Dr. Scott joined the group in 1994, as one of the first in the group.
He is on the four-physician medical staff of CPC-South. “We are
straight-shooters,” he says, with each other and with our patients. Like the
other physicians in the group, he has high ethical standards and strives to
do the right thing in fulfilling both his personal and professional
responsibilities.
The third-generation Dr. Scott has somewhat more leisure time than did his
father or grandfather, and he finds plenty of ways to enjoy it: playing with
his daughters and using his home computer to play games, shop, and surf the
web are among his favorites. When he’s not doing that, he likes to read –
preferably non-fiction. “I’m a little too cynical to read much fiction,” he
confesses. “I always think I can figure out what’s going to happen.” Once
exception is the Harry Potter series of novels, which piqued his interest in
the struggle between good and evil and the journey of self-discovery. Dr.
Scott also enjoys history, an interest he attributes to his father’s
influence. The elder Dr. Scott developed a passion for history while
attending preparatory school in Virginia, the seat of American Civil War
history.
Dr. Scott brings to his practice of medicine the compassion and dedication
he learned first-hand from his father and grandfather, and the competence
and enthusiasm of a man who is doing the work he has always wanted to do . .
. and the Center for Primary Care and his patients are all the better for
it.
