Retired doctor continues to give back
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| Dr. Joseph Woo Jr. has cared for Valley patients for nearly 60 years and continues to give back to his community. |
“He first started giving in 1968 and he’s continued ever since,” said Katie Zenovich, director of fund development for Community Medical Foundation. “He’s wonderfully committed to being a part of what makes this hospital system such a great asset to our region.”
This year’s gift from Dr. Woo was earmarked for Terry’s House, a 17,000 square-foot, two-story home away from home for families with loved ones receiving care at Community Regional Medical Center.
Dr. Woo has cared for Valley patients for nearly 60 years. He discovered his natural inclination towards science and medicine at an early age. Born in 1924 at the Burnett Sanitarium, the turn-of-the century infirmary that would become Fresno Community Hospital, Dr. Woo was an inquisitive boy who pondered how things worked.
“It would upset my mother, but I would catch frogs and dissect them to learn more about their physiology,” Dr. Woo said. “I was the kid who was always taking care of my classmates, bandaging them if they got scraped or banged up.”
Six months into a surgical residency, his career would be put on hold. Dr. Woo said he vividly remembers doing an autopsy on a patient with a pulmonary lesion. With the lesion cultured and in a Petri dish, Dr. Woo was studying the growth when a coworker bumped into him, knocking the lid off the Petri dish. Dr. Woo developed Valley Fever.
Following a six-month recovery in isolation at Fresno General (the hospital that would eventually become the county hospital that would merge with Community), Dr. Woo turned to the study of internal medicine.
After seven years of additional training, including two years as a medical officer in the United States Air Force during the Korean conflict, he opened his practice in that specialty. Since then, Dr. Woo has accumulated a history of service to Community, the Valley and his patients.
In 1965 he established one of the first coronary care units in the country in downtown Fresno. “It was the first coronary care unit in the San Joaquin Valley, fourth in the state and the 15th in the nation,” Dr. Woo said.
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| Dr. Joseph Woo Jr. and wife Mabel have invested in Community's cardiology program, burn and trauma, Clovis Community Medical Center and other needs. |
According to Dr. Woo, this was the dawn of the “high-tech era” when the practice of using sophisticated monitoring of cardiac patients and defibrillators began.
Dr. Woo was named to the Fresno Community Hospital board in 1972, and then to the Community Hospitals of Central California board as a founding member in 1982, serving until 1992. He has been chairman of the department of medicine, president of the medical staff and volunteered countless hours as a physician for the Fresno Rescue Mission and Hmong refugees as well as many medical organizations.
Dr. Woo and his wife Mabel have invested in Community’s cardiology program, burn and trauma, Clovis Community Medical Center and other needs of the region’s leading health care provider.
He’s watched medicine grow from house calls to the high-tech era during the past 60 years. But even as medical advances were booming, Dr. Woo continued to make house calls until the day he retired from his practice in 2006.
“It is an art that physicians have lost and one that should be carried on,” he said. “The patient is what counts, no matter how busy you are.”
Dr. Woo hasn’t slowed much. He and Mabel love to travel, visiting their children and five grandchildren, one of whom plans to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and graduated from medical school this year from his alma mater.
And he isn’t hanging up his stethoscope just yet. He plans to volunteer at Community Regional’s ambulatory clinics, sharing his expertise and continuing to give back. “I think I have some valuable knowledge and experience that I can pass along to the young doctors,” he said.
“The care of patients has been my vocation, avocation and passion. Continuing education is paramount to every physician – what we know is not enough.”
This story was reported special by Suzanne Crosina-Sahm. She can be reached at MedWatchToday@communitymedical.org.