Physician Profile:
Rebecca A. Talley, MD of CPC-Evans
In spite of having grown up
in a household with a family doctor and a nurse (her parents Hal and Sara),
entering the medical field was the last thing on young Rebecca Talley’s mind
as she headed off to college at the University of North Carolina in Chapel
Hill. It would take four years of college followed by quite a few unexpected
and fortunate turns in the road before she would discover what she was meant
to do with her life.
Dr. Talley describes herself as an average student at UNC. “I had a good
time, had great friends, and worked hard as manager of the cafeteria at my
dorm,” she says. She spent one year in nursing school, eventually
redirecting her intellectual energies into a major in public policy
analysis, but when she graduated in 1987, she still had no idea what she
wanted to do.
So, being newly graduated, high-spirited, adventurous, and jobless, Becca
moved to Washington D.C., a choice that was quickly rewarded with an
opportunity she still feels lucky to have had. She was offered a staff job
with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Human Rights. In
this position, she investigated and built cases for the release of
individuals in the fields of science, medicine and engineering who were
being held as political prisoners by foreign governments. “There was a great
deal of research involved and the process was very slow,” she says, but
those problems were more than offset by the unique benefits of the job:
meeting and working with people from all over the world, including Nobel
laureates, and international groups such as Doctors Without Borders, the
World Health Organization, and Amnesty International.
Working with Doctors Without Borders, a international group of physicians
dedicated to bringing medical help to those who need it most all over the
world, piqued her interest in relief work, but as she investigated this
avenue further, she realized it required medical skills she did not have.
Never to be discouraged by a closed door, Rebecca left her job with NAS and
the city she loved and headed back south. She enrolled in the physician’s
assistant graduate program at Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest
University in Winston-Salem, N.C., an academic environment she describes as
very nurturing and well suited to her disposition. After graduation in 1991,
she was immediately hired to work in a hospital emergency room in Gastonia,
N.C., where she had done a rotation during school.
The short version of Rebecca’s stint as a P.A. is that she discovered she
loved medicine but did not like working for doctors. “I learned that I don’t
take orders well and need a job that allows me to make my own decision,” she
recalls. The next logical step was medical school. While applying, she
continued working as a P.A., and was soon accepted at Bowman Gray School of
Medicine, where she embarked on her formal medical education.
While Rebecca remembers her first year in medical school as a difficult, the
rest of her medical education was easy, she says, because it was less
scientific and more practical and clinical. “I actually enjoyed my last 3
years of medical school,” she says. She had always known that she would be a
family physician like her father because the variety of patients and quick
pace suit her personality.
Dr. Talley completed her family practice residency at the University of
Pittsburgh Medical Center, St. Margaret in Pennsylvania, which she says
offered a challenging program and competitive environment. “I was a little
lonely in Pittsburgh but I enjoyed the cold weather and the many parks and
hiking trails,” she says. She bought her first house there in an older
blue-collar neighborhood. “I was quite an enigma to my neighbors at first –
a single female physician from the South – but they adopted me and taught me
how to manage a house and a snow shovel and I still enjoy their friendship.”
One aspect of life in Pittsburgh she wasn’t so fond of was the long periods
of grayness in winter. “I needed color,” she said, so she grew orchids –
hundreds of them. It is a hobby she still enjoys.
After medical school, Dr. Talley spent two weeks visiting Costa Rica and
later a month in Honduras doing relief work following Hurricane Mitch. “We
went into the villages and set up makeshift clinics” to meet the people’s
desperate need for medical attention, she explains. “One day, I saw 120
patients.” This experience sealed her affection for Latin America, its
culture and people, and further fueled her interest in relief work.
When she returned from Honduras, Dr. Talley realized that she missed living
in the South and began exploring job opportunities there. She had never
intended to move south of North Carolina, but when the Center for Primary
Care in Evans offered her a job, she reevaluated her priorities. She was
impressed with the physicians already on board and she felt the practice was
a good fit for her, so she joined the CPC-Evans physician staff. One of the
deciding factors for Dr. Talley was that she had always wanted to work where
she was really needed and wanted, and she felt CPC offered her both.
Since joining CPC nearly two years ago, Dr. Talley has bought a house in the
historic Summerville district of Augusta and thrown herself into updating
and decorating her home and grooming her yard. “I love growing things from
seed and container gardening,” she says. “Except for mowing the grass, yard
work is fun for me.” Aside from that, she enjoys the company of her two
dogs, Holly and Emma, and her cats, Hank and Josey – a friendly and curious
lot.
Dr.
Talley’s willingness to meet challenges head on and to sample the diversity
life offers might well have been predicted by her childhood. The oldest of
Dr. and Mrs. Talley’s four children, Rebecca grew up with her brother Joe,
and her sisters, Margaret and Catherine in the small North Carolina towns of
Grover and Shelby. The product of a family with a fascinating array of
abilities and hobbies, Rebecca’s childhood pursuits ranged from playing the
French horn in the family brass ensemble to raising mice to feed to her
father’s collection of snakes to nurturing a host of pets including gerbils,
cats, dogs, fish and turtles.
Dr. Talley still enjoys music, a mainstay of family life when she was
growing up. When they lived in Grover, she, her younger siblings, and their
father were known as the Talley Family Brass, since they all played brass
instruments. They played together at home all the time, she recalls, and
often performed at their small church in Grover. Dr. Talley’s specialty is
the French horn but she also plays the trombone. These days, however, she is
more likely to be seen enjoying the Augusta Symphony than performing. Dr.
Talley also likes to canoe and hike when possible, but her most regular
exercise is walking her two dogs along the Augusta Canal road, around her
neighborhood, and on the campus of Augusta State University.
Knitting, another of Dr. Talley’s hobbies, is one she finds practical,
enjoyable and tremendously relaxing. She knits socks, vests, and sweaters –
some of her own design – both for herself and as gifts for friends and
family. Dr. Talley’s love of yarn and fabrics and her creativity are likely
the result of her mother’s influence. Mrs. Talley is a talented seamstress
with a particular interest in decorative sewing, such as pillows and window
treatments. Her handiwork is well displayed in her daughter’s home.
Although Dr. Talley has yet to develop a fondness for Augusta’s summer heat,
she has happily settled in both Augusta and in her work at the Center for
Primary Care in Evans. Both are a comfortable fit and enable her to focus
her energy on the work she was meant to do and enjoys best: caring for
patients.
