PRR Prescription for Success: Dr. Bharathi Gowda

Dr. Bharathi Gowda’s father took her and her six siblings to the family doctor whenever they were ill. The doctor would administer a shot or other treatment, and she’d feel better. “All the time I used to think: ‘How come we are sick, then we go to him, and in no time at all we are fine?’” Dr. Gowda says. “That doctor was a hero in my mind.”

By the time she was 11 years old, Dr. Gowda knew she wanted to become a doctor to help sick people, too. After attending medical school in India, she moved to the U.S. and opened her own ob/gyn practice. She ran the successful practice for more than 40 years before deciding it was time to put the stress and responsibility of private practice behind her. Not yet ready for retirement and still wanting to help sick people feel better, Dr. Gowda was excited to learn about and enroll in the Physician Reentry & Retraining program and become one of its first 150 graduates.

“Without PRR, I never would have imagined myself in another medical field – general practice – which is the field I wanted to be in and which was very different than my long-time ob/gyn practice,” Dr. Gowda says. “The PRR program allows me to help patients and continue my new field of medicine. The online course is set up beautifully. It all went so smoothly. I could not imagine doing this any other way.”