Wetumpka Urgent Care medical director Dr. Lyndsay Ewing isn’t as new to medicine as her board certification shows her to be.
Ewing completed her residency less than a year ago but had medical tools before she was in first grade in Montgomery.
“There is a picture of me at about 5 and I was dressed up as a doctor checking my dad,” Ewing said. “I have always loved the idea of being able to help people.”
Ewing’s initial “medical” training came at home. Like many children, she had dreams of what she wanted to be when she grew up. But unlike many, Ewing’s dreams never wavered.
“There are no doctors in my family but I have never wanted to do anything other than being a doctor,” Ewing said.
As a child, she would see any patient she could.
“I had a little doctor’s kit and I would chase the dog around,” Ewing said. “He would see the doctor’s kit come out and start to run.”
But Ewing’s patients see her a little differently now that she has a medical degree.
“They don’t run from me now, unless there are shots I need to give them,” Ewing said with a laugh.
Ewing’s path led to a lot of firsts in her family, not just being the first doctor.
“I’m the first girl in my family to graduate from a four-year university,” Ewing said. “I have been paving the way on my own.”
Although she’s been through years of school and 100 hour weeks of residency, Ewing still has a young face and some patients still question if she’s really a doctor.
But being a young doctor has its advantages and Ewing said it might ultimately lead to better patient care.
“I think younger physicians are more thorough in work-ups instead of brushing off some things,” Ewing said. “I think we have a fire still and not jaded yet.”
Ewing works as the medical director of Ivy Creek’s Wetumpka Urgent Care and also as a doctor in Ivy Creek’s Elmore Community Hospital Emergency Room. While primary clinics see patients on a scheduled basis, Ewing likes the randomness of urgent and emergency patient care.
“I am family medicine trained and board certified in it,” Ewing said. “I had enough of that in residency of the blood pressure and diabetes management. I wanted more people coming in bleeding, the exciting stuff.
“I like not knowing what is going to come through the door. I like the surprise of it. I like the variety you get. I don’t love the follow up all the time that you get with some primary care.”
Since August, Ewing has already seen some intense moments at both the urgent care and emergency room.
“Someone came into urgent care who had cut their hand all the way open with a circle saw,” Ewing said. “We opened up [bandages] up and you could see the tendons. I was like, ‘You don’t need to be here. You’ve got to go to Montgomery because you need surgery today by a hand surgeon. That’s not anywhere up here.’”
Ewing works three to four 24-hour shifts a month in the emergency room with one trauma bay and three rooms at her disposal.
“It can get very crowded,” she said. “It can go from zero to 100 just like that. You just take them one at a time.”
Ewing’s residency was at Baptist South in Montgomery with all sorts of personnel and equipment available. But just because she is in a small setting doesn’t mean there is less care.
“I got here and sometimes I might be the only doctor in the hospital for the majority of the shift,” she said. “So I end up being the cardiologist, I’m the GI doctor. You have to be the pharmacist sometimes too. I am all the specialists but it has been really good for me because it forces you to know your information to be a better doctor.”
Because her residency started just as the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world, it provided her a unique opportunity as a fledgling medical professional.
“We watched COVID change so much over the last three years,” Ewing said. “The protocols of what we used, what we use now — it’s constantly changing and still changing. If not it was changing weekly. We would get up and were like, ‘What is the new protocol today?’”
But Ewing isn’t successful on her own.
“I adore the staff here,” Ewing said. “I feel like we have a really good group of people that are supportive of each other and helpful. I could not do this without them. It’s not about me. It’s about our staff, our whole team. It takes all of us to properly care for patients.”
Ewing is not even a year out of residency but is already preparing for the future. She isn’t required to take more board certifications but her goal is to keep up with her continuing education. Ewing will soon be Ivy Creek’s director of moderately complex laboratories where much of the testing such as blood and urine analysis as well as COVID, flu and strep tests will fall under her supervision.
“There has to be a director over the people that run all those machines,” Ewing said. “I just did all the training for that. I will stay here for a while. I would like to stay with this company for the long haul. I want to help attract the best people. I want to make this the best place I can.”
