Press Release
Dr. Alec Akbarov could have worked at just about any hospital.
Prior to 2003, he had spent all of his American medical career on the East Coast. Akbarov had been a research fellow at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and completed a general surgery residency at St. Agnes HealthCare—an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University. He also completed a cardiothoracic surgery fellowship at Robert Woods Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J.
After receiving his medical license, Akbarov was supposed to go to work for a group of cardiac surgeons in Baltimore.
So what made the cardiothoracic surgeon decide to start a life in Norfolk, Neb., instead?
The physician recruiting team at Faith Regional heath Services in Norfolk had everything to do with it.
Akbarov said that while he was negotiating a contract with the group of surgeons in Baltimore, Mary Pratt, the physician recruiter at Faith Regional, contacted him.
“How did they find out about me? I don’t know, but they checked me,” Akbarov said. “They talked to the chairman of the department. They talked to the nurses on the floor. They talked to the (operating room) people—trying to find out anything negative about me. I guess whatever they got, they liked.”
But when Akbarov received the first call from Faith Regional, he just brushed off the possibility, he said.
“I was like, Nebraska? Where’s that?” said the native of Andizban, Uzbekistan.
After receiving the fourth or fifth call from Pratt, she invited him on behalf of Faith Regional to come to Norfolk just to check out the place. By chance, Akbarov said, he and his wife, Katerina, had some time off and decided to accept the offer.
“I said what the heck. I’ve never been to the Midwest. It’s a paid trip. It’s free. We were her for four days, and it changed our lives,” Akbarov said.
Not only did Akbarov sign on to join the staff at Faith Regional, he later talked a friend—Dr. Rajiv Ranjan, a cardiologist who was a junior fellow at Robert woods Johnson University while Akbarov served as senior fellow—into coming to Norfolk as well, he said.
After almost four years in Norfolk, Akbarov said he doesn’t regret his decision to come to Norfolk. As a parent, Akbarov said he loves the idea that his children will grow up in a safe environment.
But he still receives apprehensive feedback from his peers on the coasts, Akbarov said.
Akbarov said that at a recent meeting in San Diego with other cardiac surgeons, he was asked where he was working. When Akbarov told them he was working in Nebraska, he sid the response he usually received was: “Where’s that?”
“Nebraska? Where is it? It’s in this country. If you stick your finger right in the middle of the map, it’s where Nebraska is,” Akbarov said. “People just don’t know why I’m doing this. Living on the East Coast and West Coast—where most of the training programs and big medical facilities are—people don’t know that there is another slice of the country.”
Akbarov said he knew moving to Nebraska and becoming an instrumental piece in creating an outstanding cardiac program was a risky move in his career. But it’s a risk Akbarov said he’s glad he took because the statistics from his first year through 2006 look better each year.
In 2004, Akbarov treated 208 cases. In 2006, he treated 256 cases. There are now four cardiologists working at Faith Regional’s Cardiac Institute, and Akbarov said the need for more is rising.
The success of the cardiac program has been well worth the risk, he said.
“Anytime you take a new job, you take a risk, you take a chance. Was it a reasonable risk? Yeah,” he said. “I looked at the hospital. I looked at the program. I looked at the population. Obviously, there was a risk, but I trust the administration at the hospital. I still have trust in them.”
Akbarov said one of the hardest parts about working in Norfolk is trying to change the public’s tendency to believe that they would have to go outside f the area to large medical facilities like Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to receive quality care in a cardiac program.
“I do surgery here the same way I did my training at Robert Johnson University. People are trained at the big institutions and then they go out. We don’t do anything different,” he said. “We’re doing it, and we’re doing it well.”
- Story Courtesy of the Norfolk Daily News
