Training Wound Care Physicians, Making Family Dinners. One Man’s Story.
- Janet S. Mackenzie, MD, ABPS, CWSP, AAGP
- January 4, 2021
Dr. David Violette trained as a General Surgeon and specialized in critical care. He had an active practice in southwest Virginia before joining Vohra. Today, he’s a Vohra Wound Physician, and for the past three years, has served as one of Vohra’s Fellowship Program Directors. So, what was the catalyst that brought him to Vohra?
Professional Turning Point
Dr. Violette was working 125 hours a week when his wife had their first child. He was trying to help her, but he wasn’t sleeping. This new reality proved overwhelming. Yet he realized the bright spot in every work week was the day he performed wound care. It was rewarding, not stressful. Another key difference? He wasn’t on-call, so there were no emergencies or disasters to deal with. A nurse on his team noticed and suggested he do wound care full time. After giving it some thought he started looking for an opportunity. That’s when he found Vohra.
“One of the best changes I made in my life.”
- Dr. David Violette, MD, General Surgeon and Vohra Wound Physician
Interviewing with Vohra
His interview with Vohra Physician Dr. Chris Bailey was a telling forecast of future success. Dr. Bailey said, “Let me tell you what your questions and answers are — because I’ve lived it. And honestly, it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. But I can’t prove that to you until you do it.”
And he was right. Dr. Violette joined Vohra and moved his family to South Carolina where they have friends and is “having a blast”. After six months, he had adjusted to his new life and was enjoying his weekends too. “I was making enough money to live comfortably, helping a lot of people and my family was happier, too.”
“It’s not a traditional specialty,
but it’s something I chose to do.”
Wound Care as a Specialty
While wound care has always been part of the surgical healing process, it’s only recently started getting the attention it deserves. After all, a diverse range of healthcare professionals practice wound care, so it’s been difficult to give it a proper designation. Now, after twenty years as an organization dedicated to wound care, Vohra is leading the way with specialized innovations and methodologies that are making the medical community take notice. “We’re looking at things on a biochemical level and making changes on a cellular level, unlike twenty or thirty years ago. It’s becoming apparent to physicians that this does need to be recognized as a sub-specialty.”
“Wound care has evolved and needs
to be recognized as a sub-specialty.”
The Two Facets of Vohra Fellowship
Today Dr. Violette is busy in a different capacity as a Fellowship Program Director. Early on at Vohra, he decided to perform his clinician role four and a half days a week and leave the other half day open to serve in an administrative role.
As one of the Fellowship Program Directors, Dr. Violette’s primary focus is to provide orientation to new clinicians so they can perfect their new Vohra practices. He works with a wide range of physicians, from newly graduated residents through to physicians that have worked ten or even thirty years. And because doctors join Vohra from a range of backgrounds and from 28 states, his goal is to make sure everyone has the same level of wound care expertise. What’s more, he says Vohra has the best infrastructure to nurture new clinicians from Vohra’s training modules to proprietary EMR and AI software.
“My job is to orient [new clinicians] to what a Vohra practice
is like and help them all speak the same language.”
Working through COVID-19
Early in the year, the pandemic was something Dr. Violette watched from a distance at his practice in South Carolina. What was happening in the northeast seemed surreal. But before long, he was faced with erratic shutdowns. As a result, he ran his practice exclusively through telemedicine for two months.
“We learned to test, isolate and trace. Testing is much better. We isolate much, much faster. And we have services in place now that I didn’t have six months ago.”
A Typical Wound Care Day
Unlike other Vohra Physicians, Dr. Violette has a certain amount of teaching duties and meetings in his role as a fellowship director. But in terms of his practice, a typical day starts at 7AM and he visits three or four nursing homes each day. He generally finishes around 4PM and has time for his kids when he gets home. Then it’s dinnertime together.
“It’s as close to 9 to 5 as one can get.”
Choosing Vohra
Like many career moves, joining Vohra means adopting a new system and environment while working within a defined professional framework. Dr. Violette is quick to point out that no Vohra physician is on an island. Just because they’ve never dealt with a particular situation doesn’t mean another doctor hasn’t. There are 300 doctors in the Vohra network who are just a phone call away.
“There’s no reason not to make the jump to Vohra now.”
About David Violette, MD:
Dr. Violette is an experienced senior physician with a demonstrated history of working in the hospital & health care industry as well as the post-acute & long-term setting, and currently serves as a Fellowship Program Director at Vohra Wound Physicians. Dr. Violette is skilled in Surgical Critical Care, General Surgery, Healthcare Management, Surgery, and Healthcare. He is a graduate of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
