Dr. Janet West sees a newborn during a home visit through RVA Baby.
This article has been edited since it first appeared online.
Dr. Janet West is a pediatrician and the founder of RVA Baby, which provides care to newborns in their homes.
A medical career wasn’t her first choice for a profession. West started college as a journalism and theater major. By the end of her sophomore year, she decided to join the military to help pay for school, but a health issue landed her in intensive care, and that led her to drop that career path temporarily.
She started working, had a child, and she and her husband married. Their first child had “a ton of health issues,” she says, and it was difficult to find high-quality care.
But it also inspired her to become a doctor. She received a full scholarship in premed from Saint Paul’s College in Virginia, earned her medical degree in 2003 from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and did a residency at VCU Health, all while being a mom to her first child and twins who were born three years later.
She provided service in Army facilities, including serving at Fort Lee as medical director of the exceptional family member program and also with the Kenner Army Health Clinic from 2009 to 2013.
It was enjoyable, she says. She then moved into hospital medicine, followed by private practice.
She knew firsthand what mothers and families were facing and knew that they could be better served by the system. Moms were coming to her office a day or two after they had been discharged from the hospital post-birth. “And those moms were exhausted, they were uncomfortable,” she says. “I always felt really bad for those moms — I was that mom for twins, showing up the day after being discharged.”
There were also the time constraints dealing with massive caseloads entailed.
“When I started practicing medicine, I was really unhappy with the traditional pediatric office model,” she says. “[My] first time out in private practice I was seeing 35-40 patients a day and couldn’t remember the names of the children I saw.”
Those cares and her unhappiness with the state of medicine got her to think that there might be a better way for her to practice her profession, but it also got her to consider leaving it altogether.
She returned to school, earning an MBA in physician executive leadership from the University of Tennessee in 2016. She was considering a career in health care leadership and forging policy, but “I just had the realization that I really didn’t want to work in that environment, either,” she says. “It just really didn’t sit right with me.”
West was interviewing and receiving job offers, but she talked with a classmate who was entering concierge medicine, and that gave rise to the idea for RVA Baby, which she began that same year. Her mission, she says, is to support moms in the postpartum window and give them care at home. “They also get support from me, as a part of their village, to advocate for them and reaffirm some of the things they’re feeling,” she says.
West says she is passionate about babies, and about being part of the birthing community in Richmond. It’s a gratifying experience. “It’s a very intimate relationship that I get to have with my families, which is what we want in medicine; we just don’t always have the opportunity to do it.”
In addition to the home visits, she opened a cottage in January for office visits. She only sees one family at a time there, so the kids can run around and play, she says. Mornings are spent texting with moms or in the cottage for wellness visits, followed by in-home visits in the afternoon. Her caseload is about three to four patients a day. She’s grateful to have a supportive spouse, kids who are adults and on their own (her oldest is now 29, and the twins are 26), and the ability to practice on her own terms.
But she notes that practicing on your own brings unique concerns. “It’s overwhelming because, being self-employed, there’s feast or famine,” she says, “but I’m happy, so that’s the big difference. No, [I’m] not making a six-figure salary anymore, but I don’t need that. Not everybody is in that position.
“A lot of physicians, they tell me, [I] would love to do what you do, but [I] just can’t afford it.”
Meet two more Richmond physicians who fine-tuned their careers and found greater professional satisfaction in the process.
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