Experienced hospitalist Dr. Robert Cochrane has joined Gifford Medical Center’s 24-hour hospitalist team.
Originally from Montreal, Dr. Cochrane’s first career was in engineering. Consulting work in the field brought him to the United States and soon he was considering a major career change.
“Medicine was just interesting to me,” he says, noting that his parents were aging and he found himself wanting to be “part of the solution” for them.
He took a few classes, loved it and decided to fully pursue it.
He attended the pre-medicine post baccalaureate degree program at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and then the University of Vermont College of Medicine. Dr. Cochrane went on to residency at Fletcher Allen Health Care and quickly found himself drawn to intensive care and sicker patients.
“I wanted to really be involved in more acute, sicker people,” says Dr. Cochrane, who went to work as a hospitalist – a doctor caring for hospitalized patients.
Board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and a member of the American College of Physicians, Dr. Cochrane worked for Apogee Physicians Group launching or working at hospitalist programs in medical centers across the state, including Northwest Medical Center, Springfield Hospital, Copley Hospital and Porter Medical Center as well as Alice Hyde Medical Center in Malone, N.Y.
The work with Apogee, a physician-owned business focused entirely on hospitalist medicine, meant switching jobs every few years, however. Dr. Cochrane of South Burlington was looking for more stability.
“I wanted to be in a community where I could stay for a long period of time and know the community well,” says Dr. Cochrane, who has now found that at Gifford.