Matos Nursing Profession

Renee Matos, MD. is a pediatric well care physician employed at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Her title is the assistant dean in graduate medical education and quality improvement and patient safety. She works in education and research and has focused on cardiovascular arrest research in the past. Matos is also a member of the American Board of Pediatrics. As someone who is work oriented, she invests 60-80 hours into her job in an average week, both at home and the workplace.
In order to accomplish what she has, Matos obtained several degrees. A bachelors, doctorate, and masters. She received an undergraduate degree at Princeton College, she then went to medical school at the University of San Francisco, and then pursued a masters degree of public health at the University of
Pittsburgh. Matos fulfilled three years of residency at Wilford Hall in San Antonio, where she was chief resident for a year and sub specialized critical pediatrics for 3 years. She said she thought residency was hard, but then she completed a fellowship. When asked if she planned on furthering her education, she responded with a laugh, saying, “Probably not, I've got a lot of degrees already.” She says anyone who wants to be a doctor has to study and get good grades, with emphasis on grades.
As a doctor, there is no such thing as a normal day; the patients are always experiencing something different, and the difficulty of the day depends on how sick they are.
The hardest part is that she is always away from family, she’s had to learn and is still learning how to manage work and family life. Being a doctor means she’s always on call, and has had to miss birthdays and holidays due to her job. It’s even more difficult being active duty military, Matos just got back from a six month deployment. She says, “(that) as my kids get older I can only hope they understand and are proud of the work I do, in the same way I’m proud of them.” Even though the job has its negatives, the positives more than offset it. Matos stated that the best part of her job is being able to help the patients and their families, that there’s a feeling of reward that you get when you see a sick patient finally walk. Her true love is education, after growing out of wanting to be an actress as a kid, she wanted aspired to be a teacher while in high school. She never saw herself become a doctor or joining the military. She didn’t grow up with family in either occupation and had no idea what to
expect.
Her biggest achievement is the work she’s done in education and research, and has been published five times. Being a doctor has given her more confidence in being able to take control of any situation, as well as given her a new perspective on life and what it means to live. When asked if she would do it over again, she replied, “ I like my job, so I’d like to say yes, but it’s a lot of work, work I didn’t know I was going to do, and when you’re in your 20s, you just want to be a 20-year-old. So I can’t say 20 year old me would have.” When asked if there was anything she would do differently about how she got to where she was, she said, “not at all, I love my job and the sacrifices are worth it.”