Posted 10:02 pm Sunday, August 19, 2012
Send to Kindle
Tiffany Taylor offers comfort to littlest ones
By Casey Murphy
cmurphy@tylerpaper.com
As a neonatologist, Dr. Tiffany Taylor believes the best part of her job is working with the parents of premature infants.
cmurphy@tylerpaper.com
As a neonatologist, Dr. Tiffany Taylor believes the best part of her job is working with the parents of premature infants.
“It’s the parents — helping them get through having a premature infant, especially a really small premature infant, calming their fears, helping them adjust,” she said. “It’s really hard and really a struggle having a kid here (Trinity Clinic’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). It’s very scary for them, so I like to comfort them, get them through this experience.
A neonatologist takes care of babies born early or babies who are born sick. They take care of them until they are ready to go home.
“And seeing the successes of all our infants going home is always a wonderful feeling,” she said.
Dr. Taylor, 32, is the newest addition to Trinity Clinic’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She joined the team in July after completing her residency in pediatric medicine and fellowship training in neonatal-perinatal medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. She also is board certified in general pediatrics by the American Board of Pediatrics.
She grew up in Ore City, and her husband of eight years, Chad Taylor, was raised in Mount Pleasant. The pair moved back to East Texas to be near their families.
“I always wanted to be a doctor,” she said.
In high school, she helped her great uncle care for his wife, who developed Alzheimer’s disease. Realizing she wanted to become a doctor also came from some of her high school science and biology teachers.
“All those things together made me decide I wanted to help people, and how I could do it is become a doctor,” she said.
While in undergraduate school at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. Taylor volunteered in the ICU at Children’s Medical Center.
She thought she might become a pediatrician before she found her calling in the NICU while at medical school.
The Trinity Clinic NICU, which Trinity Mother Frances Hospitals & Clinics opened in Tyler in November 2008, can have up to 25 patients at any given time, Dr. Taylor said. There are three neonatologists and five neonatal nurse practitioners there, she added.
“And seeing the successes of all our infants going home is always a wonderful feeling,” she said.
Dr. Taylor, 32, is the newest addition to Trinity Clinic’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She joined the team in July after completing her residency in pediatric medicine and fellowship training in neonatal-perinatal medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. She also is board certified in general pediatrics by the American Board of Pediatrics.
She grew up in Ore City, and her husband of eight years, Chad Taylor, was raised in Mount Pleasant. The pair moved back to East Texas to be near their families.
“I always wanted to be a doctor,” she said.
In high school, she helped her great uncle care for his wife, who developed Alzheimer’s disease. Realizing she wanted to become a doctor also came from some of her high school science and biology teachers.
“All those things together made me decide I wanted to help people, and how I could do it is become a doctor,” she said.
While in undergraduate school at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. Taylor volunteered in the ICU at Children’s Medical Center.
She thought she might become a pediatrician before she found her calling in the NICU while at medical school.
The Trinity Clinic NICU, which Trinity Mother Frances Hospitals & Clinics opened in Tyler in November 2008, can have up to 25 patients at any given time, Dr. Taylor said. There are three neonatologists and five neonatal nurse practitioners there, she added.
“It’s a growing field. It’s really good for hospitals to have because all the infants that were born here (before the NICU) had to be transferred to Dallas or Shreveport, so it’s been good for the Tyler community to have us here.”
Dr. Taylor said a lot of smaller hospitals are having to open neonatal intensive care
units so doctors and nurses can teach premature babies how to eat and other things before they can go home. This allows the larger hospitals to care for the more sick infants, she added.
“Prematurity seems to be increasing, I think because there is a lot of in vitro fertilization that’s going on,” she said. “Women, including myself, we’re just having kids later, in our late 30s.”
Mother Frances works closely with the Children’s Miracle Network and Dr. Taylor said she would like to participate more with that once she gets settled in to the community.
In her free time, Dr. Taylor likes to garden and has played softball since she was 8, although she hasn’t found a team yet in Tyler.
If you know of a professional woman or business service in the Tyler area you think should be highlighted in this column, contact me at cmurphy@tylerpaper.com or 903-596-6289.
Dr. Taylor said a lot of smaller hospitals are having to open neonatal intensive care
units so doctors and nurses can teach premature babies how to eat and other things before they can go home. This allows the larger hospitals to care for the more sick infants, she added.
“Prematurity seems to be increasing, I think because there is a lot of in vitro fertilization that’s going on,” she said. “Women, including myself, we’re just having kids later, in our late 30s.”
Mother Frances works closely with the Children’s Miracle Network and Dr. Taylor said she would like to participate more with that once she gets settled in to the community.
In her free time, Dr. Taylor likes to garden and has played softball since she was 8, although she hasn’t found a team yet in Tyler.
If you know of a professional woman or business service in the Tyler area you think should be highlighted in this column, contact me at cmurphy@tylerpaper.com or 903-596-6289.
