Return to Main Menu

Pharmacist balances life by Rule of Fives The following articles are the third in a series dedicated to National Women’s History Month and this year’s theme, “Generations of Women Moving History Forward,” which seeks to recognize the wisdom and tenacity of generations of women who have come before and those who will follow in celebrating the equality, courage, determination and steadfastness of women in American culture. by Heather Woolwine Public Relations Deborah Stier Carson, Pharm.D., has learned that the best way to determine balance in life is to apply her Rule of Fives. When she feels pulled in several different directions, she asks herself, “Who’s going to care about the decision I make in five minutes, five months, or five years. When it’s going to a faculty meeting or seeing your daughter’s play, sure, you might upset your colleagues for five minutes, or even five months, but that’s probably it for just missing the one meeting. Your child however, will deal with your decision not to attend for five minutes, five months, and five years. The flip side of that is, staying late to meet with a colleague to get something important done or take the kids to McDonald’s for the 15 thousandth time. I always ask, who’s going to care?”   Dr. Deborah Carson Carson, College of Pharmacy and S.C. AHEC (South Carolina Area Health Education Consortium), governs her life with careful consideration to ensure that those  she cares for always remain top priorities.   “Finding balance is the key to success. It’s important not to neglect your personal life during the formative years of your career. I’ve seen lots of women wake up and suddenly they are 35 without fulfilling their personal lives in whatever way might have been good for them. I was never satisfied to have one without the other,” she said.   Born in Colorado Springs, Colo., but raised primarily in Charleston, Carson graduated from James Island High School in 1971. The national women’s movement was gaining momentum then, but Carson was happy to cheer from the sidelines. While she never had any direct experience with gender disparities, she did know there were clear guidelines for acceptable female behavior. “My parents never put restrictions on me though, in terms of a career path or anything like that. Actually, the hardest thing for me was having red hair,” she said with a laugh.   Once she began attending the College of Charleston, Carson evaluated her direction. “I was sitting in this giant chemistry class thinking of where to go [and] what to do. I wanted a degree where I didn’t have to write a master’s thesis, I wanted to be able to work part-time so that I could have what I felt like was enough time to have fun and raise a family, I wanted to make decent money, and I wanted to travel the world,” she said. After two years at the College of Charleston, Carson was accepted to the MUSC College of Pharmacy, now known as the South Carolina College of Pharmacy. “During my pharmacy interview, [he] looked at my grades, which were very good, and told me not to expect to do that well in pharmacy school. It was like throwing down a gauntlet. I don’t do well with negative reinforcement. That’s how it’s always been with me; where people said it couldn’t be done, I‘d find that back door to get it done.”   Maintaining her stellar GPA throughout school, Carson continued to  advance. “I never was rebellious or one to rock the boat, but I could see the waves rising in front of me,” she said. “I always stayed one half step away from the women’s movements, but managed to take advantage of the ripples they created. I was content to have the flag wavers out front, diverting the attention from me slipping in a newly opened door.”   Once Carson received her degree in pharmacy, she began work in the MUSC hospital pharmacy. In 1977, she took an instructor position with the fledgling Family Medicine department in their innovative practice pharmacy. Carson went back for her doctorate in pharmacy and earned it by 1982.   Looking back on the more than 25 years spent at MUSC, Carson recalled a plethora of mentoring experiences that shaped her professional and personal lives. Wayne Weart, Pharm.D., South Carolina College of Pharmacy professor, served as an active role model. “I watched him closely, and he showed me another whole world of professional opportunity. Those were coattails that I grabbed and held onto for years,” she said. “There were several women from other disciplines and departments who I served with on university committees, including faculty senate. In a more nontraditional sense, I was mentored by all the faculty, staff, residents and students within the Family Medicine department. Clinical pharmacy was just coming into its own when I began working there, and it was an exciting time for our profession.”   Another of Carson’s influential mentors, David Garr, M.D., now S.C. AHEC executive director, was found in that department. “About the time David was coming to MUSC as an attending physician, my husband and I were thinking about starting our family. I had heard so many wonderful things about him that I chose him as our family physician immediately and felt comfortable about moving our family planning forward. He’s been there for me professionally and personally ever since; now he’s my boss in a whole new facet of my career.”   After decades as a clinician and educator, Carson faced a challenge unlike any she’d ever encountered. In October 2001, just weeks after the Sept. 11 tragedy, Carson’s husband was diagnosed with head and neck cancer. Within months, both her daughters underwent knee surgeries due to soccer injuries. Her Rule of Fives helped Carson decide that it was her family that needed her, and her career would have to go on hold.   “I was fortunate in that everyone in Family Medicine and Pharmacy really worked with me on that. My department chairman helped me construct a proposal to the pharmacy dean that would allow for an early retirement, and they worked really hard to accommodate my personal life. At the same time, we tried to create a win-win situation for the college and a research fellow who’d been working with me. My exit gave her the opportunity to seek my faculty position, and she became the College of Pharmacy’s only black faculty member at that time,” she said   That opportunity was one of many Carson recalled as trying to do her best to help female colleagues and students. During her tenure, she has encountered many students who needed more than a reassuring pat on the back. “Oftentimes when female students are criticized, they will take it very personally, even if the criticism is meant to be constructive,” she said. “I’ve been through buckets of tears and Kleenex trying to explain that if you want to play, you have to have another perspective. Criticism is meant to have you take another look at your work, and it’s not aimed at you as an individual. Guys just seem to be able to understand this easier. I suppose it falls in line with the whole ‘things you learn in the locker room’ idea. When guys are on a team, the coach is the boss and they absorb whatever they must while on the field. Only when they come off the field is sentiment or disappointment allowed. Traditionally, men are taught to play by the rules and be competitive; women tend to want to discuss ways to share responsibility or shy away from taking risks. It is not to say that one method is right or wrong, it’s just different ways of approaching challenges and problems. Now women, and hopefully men, are more comfortable operating in either zone, depending on the situation.”   With her husband in remission and her girls in college, Carson entertained a new career direction with an unexpected boost from her most recent mentor, Michael Schmidt, Ph.D., Microbiology and Immunology professor. “Somewhere in early 2003, Mike asked me to work on a federal grant proposal for AHEC related to bioterrorism and disaster preparedness, because he knew I had an interest in adding that sort of thing to the pharmacy curriculum,” she said. “Working for Dr. Garr, who is the PI [principal investigator] and for the project director, Beth Kennedy, has been fantastic. I’m the program manager for the overall grant and project director for a supplemental grant that’s looking at how we can go national with all of the things we learn. I also retain a clinical appointment with the college and am available to work as a staff pharmacist for Family Medicine again, so I’ve come full circle.”   Carson offered praise for two more mentors, Connie Best, M.D., Psychiatry, and Mary Mauldin, Ed.D., associate professor and Center for Academic Research & Computing director. “These two women are incredible assets to the university at large and I have had the good fortune to work with them throughout my career on various projects and committees. Most recently, they have helped shape the work we are doing on the AHEC disaster preparedness project, which will have implications for a national curriculum for disaster preparedness training for health care professionals nationwide.”   Overall, Carson felt her career afforded her the flexibility necessary to spend time with her husband and daughters. But, there are still issues in academic medicine facing women who desire to achieve professional and personal balance. “A small but significant thing to note is that there is still no comprehensive day care center on the MUSC campus and that is a very big institutional marker for me,” she said. “Of all the amazing things that we do here, it is very interesting to me that we aren’t further along when it comes to that issue. As for promotion and tenure issues, many years ago I was on a committee that examined issues of advancement for our women colleagues. The feeling was that it was tougher for women to get ahead in certain departments and areas than others, but we were sidelined because we could not get good historical data about our institution for comparison. Since that time electronic records have improved and I hope this issue is being monitored.”   Carson sees much opportunity for women in terms of leadership positions, but cautioned that even her own profession may be tipping too far to one side. “I am a little concerned that some disciplines are becoming predominantly women. I don’t think it’s ever good to shift the pendulum too far, so hopefully it will swing back toward the middle. I personally enjoy working with a healthy combination of men and women because it’s nice to have all the perspectives,” she said.   When not entrenched in all things MUSC, Carson enjoys one of her many hobbies, including photography, horseback riding, family outings, and international travel. Trusting partnerships a vital link by Heather Woolwine Public Relations Maralynne Mitcham, Ph.D., is a believer in partnerships, both professional and personal. As director of the College of Health Professions Occupational Therapy Program in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, she knows that much in her line of work is based on a trusting partnership between therapist and patient. It is a broader sense of the word that Mitcham embraces these days, one that defines the future of women and men working together in the health care arena.   ` A native of London, England, Mitcham was introduced to the health care system in her own country early in life. At 6 months old, her mother was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and Mitcham spent much of her childhood at her mother’s subsequent doctors’ appointments. “I was in the hospital a lot as a child myself, so the health care milieu was an integral part of my upbringing. I had that direct exposure, and I loved the staff that I came into contact with. I think I wanted to be every occupation that I ran into at one point or another,” she said.   At age 7, Mitcham and her parents moved to Zimbabwe, where she was exposed for the first time to a place with minimal health care. Several years after their arrival, Mitcham and her mother departed when her parents divorced. While she and her mother began to find a foothold in 1960s Great Britain, Mitcham entered an all-girls school. “Looking back, I think the prevailing  line of thinking then was still gender dominated and I think women were expected to fill clearly articulated roles and only expected to pursue a limited range of careers and all the while given strong leadership opportunities,” she said. “I can remember the careers mistress saying to me that it might be a good idea to be a teacher because if I could teach children, then when I got married and had my own children, I would have had experience with them and would know better what to do; we were encouraged to be strong, but within certain parameters.”   Also during her formative years, Mitcham and her mother established a unique bond. “She was a single mother in a time where there was still a big social stigma attached to that, and it certainly wasn’t easy for her coping with a chronic illness either, so I had a lot of responsibility earlier on,” she said. With no siblings, many adult responsibilities were Mitcham’s reality at age 12. “I learned very early the importance of partnerships; my mother was a paralegal and she explained what a partnership was and how we had to approach the household in that way.  I could be granted special considerations, and I had better have a jolly good case for it, but it was important that I hold up my end of the deal.  She never reneged on conditions. She always encouraged me to do more than she had, in terms of my education. She was fearless about advocating on my behalf, and taught me to know and activate my rights, and if required, to take proper action. She taught me to maneuver within the system and how to galvanize.”   It seems that her mother’s approach to family life resonated well with Mitcham, as she became head girl her senior year in high school. In addition, a strong head mistress, with whom Mitcham still corresponds with today, served as a positive role model for her. Mitcham is a little more cryptic when it comes to her reason for entering occupational therapy. “It was because I failed physics with a 37 percent and I’m told that no one has performed as badly since,” she said with a laugh. “I think you just eliminate certain things because you don’t have the aptitude. I was always a pretty good people person, and the holistic nature of OT had much appeal.”   After earning her diploma from the Saint Andrew’s School of Occupational Therapy in Northampton, England, and working for a couple of years in England, Mitcham left the U.K. “I came to the United States in 1973 for a post graduate year. I had been in the country for about six or seven months when the chair of the OT department at the Medical College of Georgia [Nancy Prendergast] took me under her wing. She made it possible for me to get American credentials so I could secure a spot in graduate school at the College’s School of Graduate Studies for a master’s degree in health education,” she said. Once Mitcham completed that degree, Prendergast hired her for a faculty position. By 1983, Mitcham had earned her Ph.D. in educational psychology. “She really helped me develop and prepared me to take the baton and run with it somewhere else,” Mitcham noted.   Two years later, Mitcham arrived at MUSC as chair and associate professor for the Occupational Therapy Educational Department, and was promoted to full professor a few years later. Since that arrival 20 years ago, Mitcham has held many positions within her college, including assistant dean, associate dean, director of graduate studies and assistant dean for research;  six years ago she resumed the directorship of the OT Education Program. She is adjunct faculty for the Dalhousie University School of Occupational Therapy in Halifax, Nova Scotia and has been a visiting professor in Australia,  South Africa and New Zealand. As she ascended the ranks within her profession, some might say that being in a female-dominated field helped Mitcham achieve professional success.   Mitcham credits something else. “There’s a famous Aristotle quote that I like , ‘We are what we repeatedly do; excellence then is not an act, but a habit.’ Whenever you’re in a situation (or culture) that has an imbalance based on any variable, and you’re trying to address that particular variable, there’s always a beginning phase of development which you hope will translate into more authentic ways of doing and being,” she said. “But being authentic is the challenge; you want to be valued for who you are  as a person, instead of being forced to fit in. It’s all about harnessing the collective wisdom and making things happen; creating that sense of partnership is key with students, administration and colleagues. It’s an effective way to operate and I like to think that a sense of collection wins the day in the end.“   That collective philosophy can be a challenge for more conservative places like Charleston, but Mitcham seeks to deal with the context  with good humor.   “You have to keep a smile on your face, a lilt in your voice and not take umbrage at things unnecessarily. I’m a big picture thinker, meaning that I will take any opportunity to create something positive and make it happen,” she said. Partnerships defined the past few years for Mitcham, including success with several federally funded community-based training grants that linked the community and MUSC in meeting the needs of underserved areas.   Mitcham finds reason for optimism in initiatives on campus like the Women’s Scholars Program and administrator buy-in. “If you’re a good leader, you want people to succeed and have that partnership. You help them plot their way in an academic environment to work for their promotion and tenure opportunities,“ she said.  “You have to continually to develop the careers of your faculty and help them figure out how to work within the system. But, we can’t take ourselves too seriously.”      Mitcham also cautioned young women and other up-and-coming health care professionals to remember to balance their lives. “Twenty years ago it was cool to not have those boundaries between work and home… but in the last few years, we’ve let it go too far. Now, I’m much more interested in discretionary use of my time, and I’m working on developing that ‘cutting it off’ skill. In the United States,  we are not good at taking service leave, or time off for good behavior and that’s a shame. We need to work on that.”   To continue development of her “cutting it off” skill, Mitcham is an avid reader, traveler, and  self-described audio bookaholic. She also enjoys listening to classical music and spending time with her husband, Chris Brumfield,  and Jack Russell terrier, Ms. Foxx. Friday, March 23, 2007 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Publications at 849-1778, ext. 201.