Mar 30, 2019 5 min read

Have you thanked your doctor lately? Today marks National Doctor’s Day, a day that honors physicians for the work they do for their patients and their communities.

Dr. Paul Cullen, vice president of medical affairs for the Washington Health System, will tell you there’s no need to thank him. For him, medicine is a calling.

“I love my job, every aspect of it,” Cullen said. “It’s a blessing to be able to help people in their time of need and to develop relationships with them.”

Cullen came to Washington as a resident back in 1976 after graduating medical school. His specialty is family practice but he wound up becoming an instructor in and eventually the director of the residency program. Cullen, now 68, said decades of working with patients was very rewarding and allowed him to cultivate wonderful, trusting relationships with his patients.

“I worked in our family practice program for a long time, so I had patients who I’d been with for 30 years when I ended up moving to this job,” he said. “It’s a very special job that one has to treat with the utmost respect because you’re seeing people at their most vulnerable times.”

Cullen is a Brentwood native and developed his love of medicine at an early age.

“I was fascinated by the aspects of diagnosis and treatment,” he said. “I always was interested in science. I became sold on this from a pretty early age.”

He said he just always knew that he wanted to pursue medicine as a career. His mother got him a job as an orderly at a hospital and he worked there six years during high school and college taking in everything he could.

“That was probably as important as my medical training,” he said, “and developing my perspective, sensitivity, teamwork, understanding what the people that are caring for the patient are dealing with, understanding the patient’s view from the bedside, that kind of thing.”

Cullen wound up at Washington Hospital after interviewing with the founder of its residency program, the late Dr. George Schmieler, who made a lasting impression. Cullen eventually followed Schmieler’s legacy of teaching medicine.

Cullen also decided to stay in Washington after his residency joined by his wife, Debra, who was a nurse. They have two children and three grandchildren. The tradition of being a teaching hospital is important and

Cullen said he’s proud to be educating the next generation of doctors and preparing them to face all kinds of medical situations and cases. One point he stresses is that trust between a patient and doctor is crucial-especially when it comes to a primary care doctor.

“As a generalist, you are faced with every kind of complaint you could imagine,” Cullen said. “And a generalist is somebody like a family physician or a general internist or pediatrician. You’re the entry point in the healthcare system. Your job is to know when something is innocent and nothing to worry about versus something that might be very serious.”

Medicine has changed and evolved through the decades, as has the role of some doctors. Specialists are in high demand now with patients seeking more referrals from their family doctor. Cullen says hospitals have also changed they way they are structured.

“Most primary care doctors no longer come to the hospital to care for patients,” he explained. “We’ve developed a hospitalist service which is a group of internists. Internal medicine specialists do nothing but practice in the hospital. The team we have here is excellent and I’m just very satisfied to have them here and they do a great job.”

Washington Health System also owns the Washington Physicians Group which is a network of about 60 doctors and 25 advanced practitioners, which Cullen says play a very important role in medicine these days.

“Advanced practitioners are a critical part of the health care delivery system today,” Cullen said. “They are your nurse practitioners and physicians assistants. Even though we’re celebrating Doctor’s Day, I wouldn’t overlook the importance of those additional professionals in providing excellent care and making the system work efficiently.”

Though Dr. Cullen’s role has evolved over the years from treating patients on a daily basis into an administrative position and that of a teacher, he says he never stops learning himself.

“There are a lot of things you learn along the way and how to approach different kinds of people,” he said, “how to break bad news, sharing the joy of somebody who’s had a fantastic outcome from a treatment. It’s a great job. I’ve had a wonderful career in medicine and to be able to touch lives and get the reward of making the right call and see somebody get better and those kind of things. They’re special.”