After more than a decade of schooling, Kalispell native Dr. Quin Stevens is off to Minneapolis to complete a three-year residency with plans to bring her medical expertise and compassionate care back home to Montana.

“It’s been a long time,” Stevens said.

On May 28, Stevens received her doctor of medicine degree, graduating from the University of Washington School of Medicine through a unique multistate regional program serving Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. The four-year medical education program is referred to simply as WWAMI.

Through the program, Stevens is achieving her goal of becoming an emergency room physician.

“This program has been in Montana for about 50 years and it trains people like me who … grew up in these communities, cares about these communities and helps them become doctors under the partnership at the University of Washington,” she said.

A large focus of WWAMI is to educate students committed to becoming primary care physicians in rural and underserved communities. The program was created in the ’70s in response to shortages of physicians and a lack of medical schools throughout the northwest.

In Montana, the program enrolls about 30 students a year.

“The program is small. The training really focuses on quality,” Stevens said. “I felt really supported.”

For residencies, WWAMI students go through an interview and ranking process to match with residencies. When weighing her options, Stevens looked for a medical facility with a trauma center and a high patient volume to get a well-rounded experience. She found that in Minnesota where she did what is called an “audition rotation,” a weekslong process to see how prospective residents perform.

“I was there for a month as a medical student working with residents there and an attending physician who supervised me,” she said.

HER INTEREST in medicine was sparked in high school. The 2011 Glacier High School grad said it was her undergraduate studies in cell biology and neuroscience at Montana State University that solidified her goal to become a doctor. Before she enrolled in medical school in 2018, however, she took three years off to further explore what type of doctor she wanted to be.

“I just felt I needed more experience in the field so I took three years off and I worked in domestic violence advocacy in Bozeman and I worked as a phlebotomist in the hospital where I was first exposed to emergency medicine,” she said.

She felt herself thriving in the emergency room environment — the pace, the variety of medical cases, patients and ages.

“An emergency physician is ready for anyone at any time — anyone who walks through the door that’s in a life-threatening crisis, or someone who just needs a place to sleep that night because it’s cold outside and snowy, no matter the reason, from kids to older adults. It just fit and I loved it. I loved being there,” she said.

Volunteering as an advocate for domestic violence survivors gave her experience in providing support to people who have experienced trauma.

“I saw how these people experiencing intimate partner violence have unique medical needs too that require sensitivity and physicians who can try to understand. They interface with emergency departments all the time,” Stevens said. “I’ve learned the people around us, in our communities, may be going through hardship you can’t see always.”

IN MEDICAL school, Stevens also chose to earn a certificate in underserved medicine. The certificate provided additional training in caring for vulnerable populations and populations that have a subset of certain medical needs, according to Stevens.

“So that can be veteran care, could be homeless people, it could be Native Americans’ health,” she said, or rural communities overall.

She thought this additional training would serve her well in an emergency room, which gets a variety of patients of different backgrounds.

“I think, for me specifically going into emergency medicine, many of the failures of the health care system and the patients that get lost in that end up in the emergency department because it is that place to go,” she said.

Her compassionate nature was noted by faculty and peers, who nominated her to become a member of the national Gold Humanism Honor Society. This honor society inducts medical students, physicians and faculty, “who practice patient-centered care by modeling the qualities of integrity, excellence, compassion, altruism, respect and empathy,” according to the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.

“I certainly approach every patient encounter with an open mindset and I try to put myself in their shoes. That’s been a focus of mine,” she said, adding that this bedside manner was developed through her medical training.

One of the things she finds fulfilling about emergency medicine is “being able to build trust in such a short emergency encounter.” Her method is simple.

“I listen. I try not to interrupt my patients. I always ask — I may have ideas about what’s going on but — ‘What are you most worried about? What are you most concerned about?’”

Stevens believes that finding creative ways to ease a patient’s worry is part of medical care too.

“It’s a whole person sitting there with a life and life stressors — so acknowledging that when possible,” she said.

Stevens views the profession as a lifetime commitment to learning, drawing from the knowledge of the teams of physicians, nurses, technicians and specialists she will work with in the future.

Her hope is to eventually return to the Flathead Valley where her family resides. While Stevens is a first-generation physician, there is a common thread in her family of working in health care. Her mother was a nurse before giving birth to Stevens and her youngest sister, a recent Carroll College graduate, is starting pharmacy school in Colorado. She also has another sister, Shea, who is a veterinarian in Bigfork and Whitefish.

“It’s not easy. It’s taken a lot of hard work and dedication and perseverance. I am thankful to have had such supportive family members behind me,” she said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 406-758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.