Patrice Harris – Queen moremi https://queenmoremi.com Fri, 06 Jul 2018 12:52:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 Dr Patrice Harris Makes History As First Black Woman to Be President of American Medical Association https://queenmoremi.com/2018/07/dr-patrice-harris-makes-history-as-first-black-woman-to-be-president-of-american-medical-association/ Fri, 06 Jul 2018 06:22:34 +0000 http://queenmoremi.com/?p=2882 Dr. Patrice Harris is totally giving us #BlackExcellence goals right now. This ambitious doctor who hails from Bluefield, West Virginia in the United States of America, will serve as the…]]>

Dr. Patrice Harris is totally giving us #BlackExcellence goals right now.

This ambitious doctor who hails from Bluefield, West Virginia in the United States of America, will serve as the Association’s 174th president, Charleston Gazette-Mail reports.

The West Virginia University (WVU) graduate, who begins her tenure as president June 2019, knew she wanted to be a doctor, but wasn’t sure how to achieve it since no one else in her family had gone to medical school.

“No one in my family had gone to medical school, and I had no family friends that did… it is not an easy thing to do if you don’t know or don’t have guidance about what to major in.”

Harris had studied psychiatry in Atlanta, Georgia and reveales that she she initially planned to specialise in a different field of medicine when she found that she had an unusual love for how the brain worked.

“The brain was just fascinating to me, and when I went to my third-year psychiatry clerkship I felt at home, and I then decided that I could merge my love for working with children and adolescents with psychiatry.”

Harris received her Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree and a medical degree from WVU and was named a delegate to the AMA when she joined the American Psychiatrist Association board of trustees in 2011. She also serves as part of the Association’s opioid task force.
She says that people doubted her when she got into medical school and encouraged her to pursue another career.
“I recall early on I had been advised to perhaps go into nursing and not medicine. Nursing is a very noble career and noble profession, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. It could have been related to the fact that I was a woman, the fact that I was a person of color…I don’t know.”

Despite the challenges she has faced along the way, she says her family always supported her.

“I always knew from my family and my parents that I could be whatever I wanted to be.”

Rise, Black Girl, Rise!

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