Marie Savard MD
Inspiring people to take control of their own health decisions was a major theme throughout my career. I developed a personal health record system for patients to manage and store their own records and wrote four books, all with the theme of empowering patients - whether to manage their health information (How To Save Your Own Life and The Savard Health Record), make the best health choices based on body shape (Apples and Pears book), or to share all my insider views of women’s health issues (Ask Dr. Marie).
I followed in my mother’s footsteps and first trained as a nurse before going to medical school and becoming board certified in Internal Medicine. I always had my sharpest focus on women’s health and older adults. I think my brief career as a nurse sharpened the lens through which I viewed the problems and concerns of patients and their families.
Today I am committed to spreading the word about the risks and dangers of older adults taking too many medications. I have heard from countless people about their own personal experiences with a parent or loved one. The good news is that the medical community is finally paying attention and addressing this huge problem. Unfortunately physicians admittedly have so little time and in truth don’t have the complete picture of what a patient actually takes (patients see multiple physicians and typically left hand doesn’t know what right hand is doing). It is much easier to write yet another prescription for a patient complaint even though many of the complaints stem from medication side effects rather than a new problem.
I loved working too in medical journalism to spread the word, both in print and television. I was a Medical Contributor for ABC news for 5 years when Dr. Timothy Johnson was stepping down. I appeared primarily on GMA but also World News, Oprah, CNN, The View, etc.
I enjoyed working in the media but I have always loved writing best as a way to share my thoughts and perspective. (I wrote a health column for Women’s Day magazine in the late 1990s.) Writing to a large audience for me has a greater impact as I could share so much more than I could with a quick often 4 minute TV segment.
