Fearing he might one day look back with chagrin on a missed opportunity to travel the world in a medical capacity, Dr. Jeffrey C. Goodman of Kilauea has quit his job with Kauai Medical Clinic to become a roving technical
Fearing he might one day look back with chagrin on a missed opportunity to travel the world in a medical capacity, Dr. Jeffrey C. Goodman of Kilauea has quit his job with Kauai Medical Clinic to become a roving technical advisor with the International Medical Corps (IMC).
“I thought, ‘what the heck. It’s time to live an adventure,'” said Goodman, for 31 years a country doctor at Kauai Medical Clinic’s North Shore Clinic in Kilauea.
He leaves Friday for IMC’s headquarters in Los Angeles, will spend Christmas with family in San Diego, and on Jan. 1, 2004 will be bound for international points yet unknown.
As IMC’s roving technical advisor, he will be on the road six to nine months of the year, and understands his first stops may include returns to Afghanistan and Iraq.
He has served IMC in Kabul, Afghanistan and Baghdad, Iraq, and figures he’ll be called to return there, as those are two of the newer IMC clinic and hospital locations, he said Friday.
IMC has operations in 30 countries, from Afghanistan to Zambia, and he’ll provide medical expertise at each stop, staying for around three months at each location, he explained.
Goodman said IMC officials were actively recruiting him to leave his Kilauea practice for international practice, and he continually told them during his recent trip to the Middle East that he can’t, because of his North Shore practice.
After returning home and thinking about it further, he decided to call IMC officials and see if the offer was still on the table.
“I really felt the need to do that now,” he said.
“I don’t want to look back and say ‘I wish I would have taken that IMC job and affected millions of people’s lives, instead of just hundreds (on Kaua‘i),'” he said.
“I’m leaving without any anger or bad feelings about my group,” he said of his previous employer.
His friends in the Kilauea community planned a going-away party for Goodman on Saturday, Nov. 1, in the afternoon. Gary Pacheco is the ringleader of the party-planning group that includes County Councilmember Jay Furfaro.
Associate Editor Paul C. Curtis can be reached at pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
