The story below is from our July/August 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Primary care and family physician Dr. Julia Hemphill shares her best advice for aspiring doctors, as well as her favorite parts of the job.
Jared Ladia
Dr. Julia T. Hemphill has been recognized as a “Top Doc” in this year’s nursing poll, thanks to her role as a primary care and family medicine physician. “Nurses are in the know, so it is an honor for them to think of me!” she says of the recognition.
For Hemphill, she feels privileged to be in a small town that allows for the full scope of family practice (from births to deaths and everything in between), as well as a particular closeness to her patients. She says her favorite part of the job is creating those long-term relationships with her patients and “experiencing life’s ups and downs with them… it is also rewarding to see them get better, beat cancer and control their blood pressure and diabetes.”
She completed her degree at University of Alabama School of Medicine, completed her residency at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and currently practices at Carilion Clinic Family Medicine in Shawsville. Aspiring doctors should certainly heed her advice, and perhaps even the longest-standing physicians could also learn from her tips: “Don’t be afraid to share some of yourself with your patients. Each patient is an interesting puzzle to be solved—what is their diagnosis? What will motivate them to change?”
It’s these questions that have allowed her to build her career as a respected physician in the region, and connect to Roanokers when they need her most. When she’s not helping patients, Hemphill and her family like to hike and attend sporting events. Up until recently, those were mostly for their children’s teams, but it sounds like she’s pretty excited for an upcoming season: “We have Virginia Tech women’s basketball season tickets next year. Go Hokies!” She also loves any event she can wear sequins to, as she did most recently at a nearby Taylor Swift concert!
The story above is from our July/August 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!