Tom Dean is a retired family physician who grew up on a farm west of Wessington Springs, South Dakota. He graduated from Wessington Springs High School, Carleton College in Minnesota and medical school in Rochester, New York. He completed a family medicine residency at the University of Washington in Seattle. He returned to Wessington Springs to practice in 1978 along with his wife, Kathy, a certified nurse midwife. He retired after 43 years of practice and still lives in Wessington Springs.
Our society faces a number of health care challenges, but the one I find most troubling is maternal mortality — women dying as a result of child birth. The actual numbers are quite small but the tragedy associated with them is immense. Furthermore, these deaths provide a window into the overall functioning, or rather the […]
