Pub. 3 2019 Issue 2

B orn to a mother who grew up in Southern Africa and a father from Ireland, Dr. Paula Cook grew up in Zimbabwe (which was then Rhodesia) and also lived in Ireland for three years of her childhood. Although the country has experienced a great deal of political and economic unrest in recent years, Cook speaks of a wonderful childhood and the excellent educa- tion she received as she attended boarding schools starting from age 11. After graduating from high school, she moved to the states to attend college at Brigham Young University (BYU) but ultimately transferred to the University of Utah to finish her undergraduate degree. Dr. Cook took a less traditional course to medical school than many students. While she moved to the states in- tending to start medical school immediately after finishing college, she took a bit of a detour as she and her husband started a family at a young age. By her early 20s, she already had three little girls at home. At age 30, she was accepted to the University of Utah Medical School. To say she had an in- teresting start in school would be an understatement as she gave birth to her son during the finals week of her first year! Following medical school, Cook matched into St. Mark’s Fam- ily Medicine Residency in Salt Lake City. From providing care each day in the community-based clinic to working along- side wonderful mentors and colleagues, she has nothing but positive things to say about her experience there. When Dr. Cook started residency, she knew she wanted to become a family physician to be as helpful to as many people as possible. As a family doctor, she could treat the whole family from children to the elderly, treating infectious disease and providing preventive care. She also developed a passion for working with people with substance use disorder. From her time as an undergraduate, Dr. Cook was involved in harm reduction and addiction medicine. She tells of a time volunteering at the Fourth Street Clinic where the very first patient she saw was a woman injecting heroin by “skin-popping” who was covered in abscesses as a result. Cook experienced a horrifying realization of the depth of the problem we have on our hands as a society. While the pa- tient was receiving good care at the Fourth Street Clinic, she had few other resources. It was impossible to comprehend how someone could be suffering so much. During medical school, Dr. Cook continued to be involved in addiction medi- cine and completed an internship at Volunteers of America. Cook says, “it was an incredibly eye-opening, witnessing that social detox model and learning about alcohol withdrawal symptoms, and opioid and meth use.” Following the completion of her residency, Dr. Cook worked for Wasatch Family Medicine and also earned her boards in addiction medicine. She eventually found herself spending about 75% of her time with family medicine patients and 25% of her time seeing patients with substance use disor- der. Demand began to increase for substance abuse servic- es, and Cook was the only one in her practice prescribing buprenorphine and giving Vivitrol shots. The office started getting up to five calls a day from people wanting help with substance abuse. “When someone wants help for addic- tion, you have to see them that day,” stresses Cook.“You can’t ask them to wait a few weeks for an appointment.” Dr. Cook was also doing considerable work with Dr. Eliza- beth Howell, who was running the addiction psychiatry program at the University of Utah. Dr. Howell facilitated a position for Cook to work full-time at the University of Utah University Neuropsychiatric Institute (UNI) as a hospital- ist and also launch an addiction medicine fellowship, the first of its kind in Utah. “I left my primary care practice with quite a lot of reservations because I knew I was going to miss my patients and miss doing primary care full time,” says Cook, “but I was also excited to do addiction medicine full time as there was such a need for it.” Dr. Cook describes the past four years since starting her new position as “an amazing journey of opportunity and learning.” The addiction medicine fellowship, now in its third year, went from having one fellow in the first year to now having five fellows. Dr. Cook has also been involved in Paula Cook, M.D. Member Spotlight www.UtahAFP.org | 10