‘Sky Is the Limit’ for Family Docs in the Army
Nov. 8, 2024, David Mitchell — Lt. Gen. Mary Izaguirre, D.O., M.P.H., FAAFP, made a three-year commitment when she joined the U.S. Army to help pay for medical school. Three decades later, she’s still in the service.
“I was going to do my three years and go out and be a local family doc in the community,” Izaguirre said. “I did that. I just didn’t realize that my community was going to be professional and not geographical. My community doesn’t have a ZIP code; it is made up of soldiers and their families. I run into people from that community no matter where my plane lands.”
As surgeon general and commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Command, Izaguirre’s Army medicine professional community includes 86,000 military personnel and 4,000 civilians at 111 units. Her training and duties have taken Izaguirre all over the country, as well as to Afghanistan, Eritrea, Germany and Iraq.
“I’m humbled every day by what our Army medicine professionals bring to bear in service of our nation,” she said. “I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined I’d have this opportunity to serve in this role.”
In the Army, Izaguirre said she found her sense of ikigai, the Japanese concept of doing what a person is good at, what that person loves, what the world needs and what that person could be paid for. She has held a wide variety of roles, including family medicine residency program director, medical director, command surgeon of an Army division, supervisory assistant deputy for health affairs in the Pentagon and commander of an Army medical center in Honolulu.
Izaguirre said her ikigai comes from the combination of service and adventure, as well as the ability to care for soldiers, their families and retirees. She has also been able to earn three master’s degrees while in the service.
Three of the last four Army surgeon generals have been women. Her friend, neighbor, and fellow family physician, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, M.D., M.P.H., FAAFP, is the director of the Defense Health Agency.
“Our family medicine training is based on looking at the whole person,” Izaguirre said. “We tend to be compassionate, pragmatic problem solvers. These skills serve us well in leadership. For people interested in the military and family medicine, the sky is the limit because the skillset you will have is incredibly valuable. It’s an opportunity to live a life of service and adventure.”
Izaguirre said she’s grateful for the connections she’s made with family physicians from all branches of the military through the Uniformed Services AFP.
“As uniformed family physicians, we have more in common with each other than we do with the civilian physicians in the state chapters,” she said, “and our patients have more in common with each other than they would with civilian patients. USAFP is a place for us to come together.”
Izaguirre doesn’t have a regular panel of patients, but she maintains her American Board of Family Medicine certification and keeps a hand in clinical care.
“It’s important to maintain a connection with my clinical perspective,” she said. “It gives me insight into what we need to do for our soldiers.”
The Army surgeon general typically serves four years. Izaguirre is completing her first year in the role. She has five children ranging in age from 8 to 26, including two who have joined the Army. She said she’s keeping her future options open but would be interested in a deeper focus on provision of patient care in her next role.
“I love patient care,” she said. “It’s part of the joy in what we do.”
Patient relationships are what drew Izaguirre to health care, specifically human health.
“I worked as a vet tech in high school, and I enjoyed that a lot,” she said. “I worked there for a couple of years. I really enjoyed the biology and physiology of it, but I really wanted to be able to talk to my patients. Work as a physician gave me a chance to care for patients who engaged in that conversation.”
Izaguirre worked two jobs in college, serving as an electrocardiography technician at the local hospital and as a lifeguard at a country club. Physician members of the country club offered to let her shadow them in the hospital operating room.
“I spent two years thinking I was going into general surgery,” she said, “but when my rotations started, I loved the OR but also obstetrics, cardiology, pediatrics. You can see where this is going. I didn’t want to give up any of those opportunities, so when I did my family medicine rotation, I felt like I had found my home.”