Danielson New Obstetrics and Gynecology Doctor at MMC
Danielson Named New Obstetrics and Gynecology Doctor at MMC
By: Kayla Meyer, The Port Lavaca Wave
Memorial Medical Center welcomes a new obstetrics and gynecologist physician, Dr. Maia Danielson.
Danielson begins seeing patients at MMC May 5.
Danielson, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended undergraduate school at the University of California, Davis and went on to medical school at Eastern Virginia Medical School. Danielson completed an internship is out of Texas Health Science Center at El Paso and did her obstetrics and gynecology residency at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.
After working in the United States for several years, Danielson said she was looking for a change. She chose to practice medicine in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
"I knew I wanted to do regular practice but I'd like to do something a little different, so we went out to Dubai," Danielson said.
Danielson practiced medicine in Dubai for about two years. She said the experience was an interesting one, working with doctors and nurses from all over the world, particularly the United Kingdom.
"The thing is you do the same thing over and over, the same medicines over and over," Danielson said. "The UK has different medicines and different attitudes toward medicine and some of the things that our college says is OK, the royal college disagrees with and so it gives you a different perspective."
"The setup is very, very different," she added. "It was an American hospital in Dubai. They were trying blend US medicine with UK medicine, and in the obstetric arena, it doesn't blend fantastic. We do things very differently. What we consider to be normal testing, they're like, 'Oh, you don't need that,' and things that they're like, 'Oh, we really need that,' they're, 'What are you talking about.' It's really interesting."
Danielson added that part of the reason she chose to practice medicine in Dubai was to expose her son to the international community. She said learning practices from different doctors with different backgrounds helps to broaden
"All these different people had very different backgrounds and everybody did things a little differently," Danielson said. "What was considered normal was very different from person to person, so getting everyone together to create standardized order, standardized everything was a challenge."
After spending time with the international medical community, she and her son decided to move back to the United States as he was getting ready to enter high school.
"So we're over in Dubai and my son starts high school this year so it was time to come back," Danielson said. "So we wanted to come back, my son especially wanted to come back to Texas and he likes small towns and I like small towns, so that's kind of how we ended up here."
She added that she heard about the position with MMC while looking into another facility in Texas.
"I read about it (the job at MMC) while I was in Dubai. I came over to interview somewhere else actually, didn't really like that place, and
the recruiter said, 'While you're there, you should go down to Port Lavaca,'" Danielson said. "They said, 'You like small towns, you like being by the water, you should go check this out, so I made a rather long trip."
She drove to Port Lavaca from Dallas one afternoon while in Texas and was pleased to learn about the hospital.
"Came down here, looked at it, talked with them, and you know it was surprising. I asked about all like what bloods are available, what blood typing do you have, what services and they're actually, for such a small hospital, extremely well organized. They really do have all the basics for any serious emergency," she said.
She also said she liked Port Lavaca's proximity to larger medical facilities such as the health center in Houston, if needed.
Danielson estimates that she has delivered close to 5,000 babies in her career and has helped many women. She said she was not sure she wanted to go into the field until her rotations in medical school.
"When I was doing my clinical rotation when you're in your third year of medical school, I never considered OB/GYN, I never considered it, but then during the rotation, I thought, 'Oh, everyone is happy,' and you still get to do surgery. Our field is more or less the happy part of medicine," Danielson said.
She added that she is looking forward to learning more about the community.
"It's just like any practice, you're just going to see the different kinds of problems people have. Every area, people different kinds of problems," Danielson said. "You kind of see what's going on in the community and it just takes time to see that and the gynecology, the same thing."