At Comprehensive Wellness, we enjoy working with a diverse team of clinicians to bring our patients the most comprehensive care in the area. Over the course of the next few months, we will be introducing you to each member of our clinical staff to share with you, our patients, more of what makes us love what we do.
Meet Dr. Rebecca Parish
What is your current role at Comprehensive Wellness and how long have you held it?
I am the founder and medical director of Comprehensive Wellness.
What do you like best about your role?
I absolutely love taking care of my patients, collaborating with colleagues in different fields to be more effective, and getting to interact with both patients and colleagues in a more casual, friendly way.
What drew you to your current role?
That is a great question!! About three years ago, I knew I had to make a change professionally in order to honor my ethics and priorities for patient care. I looked around at the options and nothing seemed quite “different enough” from the status quo that I was trying to distance myself from. So I ultimately decided to try to put together what I thought was missing from our community myself—a place where patients can be holistically cared for by a team of high quality, compassionate, evidenced-based clinicians. And, of course, we needed a mascot – Blue the Dog was my first recruit to Comprehensive Wellness!
What about Comprehensive Wellness drew you to join our practice? What do you feel makes Comprehensive Wellness special?
As a physician for many years, nothing means as much to me as feedback from my patients. It is truly humbling to hear gratitude for saving someone’s life, intervening and solving the problem when others hadn’t, even the patients’ disappointments from needs not met are helpful to hear and learn from. These feedback experiences (I believe) happen to many physicians over the course of their careers.
I realized that Comprehensive Wellness was truly unique when I got a very different kind of feedback. A patient said to me a few months ago: “I was having a bad day so I just wanted to come over and sit in your waiting room – it always makes me feel better.” I was truly floored! To have created an environment where people felt seen, understood, cared for that starts in the waiting room?!? This was truly something that I don’t think could happen in a typical physician’s office environment.
At Comprehensive Wellness, we strive to treat one another and all of our patients with kindness, respect, a sense of humor and the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think I have ever been as proud of the staff, clinicians, Blue and the dynamic that we all create at Comprehensive Wellness as I was right then because, at least for that patient at that moment, we had succeeded.
Tell us a bit about yourself—something we might not know.
I grew up in the East Bay and I’m one of four girls. My parents live nearby and my husband and I moved back to the area after we had our oldest daughter. We wanted our children to grow up around grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. All of my sisters now live within about a one-hour radius of my parents!
I am the only physician in my entire family. I initially planned a career in academic medicine and had accepted a position at Stanford after completing my residency training before realizing that I really wanted a simpler life for my young family than full-time academics could really provide. Phew!
I have a lifelong pattern of bringing home stray animals. My parents warned my husband about this before we got married, but he chose to go ahead with it anyway. We currently have two large labs, three wayward kittens and a regular rotation of goldfish, ladybugs in rescue boxes, and random strays who visit the front porch, hoping for some food and maybe a little TLC.
Is there anything else you would like to share with our followers/patients?
I truly think Comprehensive Wellness is special. I encourage everyone to check out the website, learn more about our clinicians, and explore the talks and workshops that are available. I learn every day from this amazing group of people that I get to work with. I am humbled and so, so grateful.
