Alumni Focus

Dr. Linda Coffin DMS '76: Finding Her Niche

Dr. Linda Coffin DMS '76

In December 1999, while many were bracing for the disaster some predicted Y2k would bring, Dr. Linda Coffin DMS '76 was facing her own, and very real, crisis. After years of financial instability, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, an HMO with which Dr. Coffin had practiced for 17 years, abruptly closed its doors and left Rhode Island entirely. For the first time in her 20 year career, the internist, who specialized in senior care, gestational diabetes, and women's health, had no practice and no patients. "I was devastated," Dr. Coffin recalls.

But from crisis came opportunity. Rather than scrambling to find a new practice, Coffin decided to use her new found 'downtime' to reassess her career and her life. "It was an opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the things that I wanted to do in my life," Dr. Coffin explains. At age 50, she started taking piano lessons and painting in watercolor. She became more involved in her church as a trustee and deacon. And she started doing medical missions to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.

One of the most profound changes in her life came when she started doing volunteer work at a local hospice. "I realized that one of the most rewarding things I could do in medicine was care for patients who were terminal, who were at the end of their lives, who had no curative treatment options available to them," Linda Coffin explains. "Within eight months of losing my job, I decided I wanted to do hospice medicine. I reinvented myself as a physician--I had found my niche."

At 51, Linda Coffin passed the boards in Palliative and Hospice Care and has been providing care for terminal patients and their families with Home & Hospice Care of Rhode Island since. She is a tireless patient advocate who regularly makes house calls and is so accessible to her patients, she's even been known to give them her home phone number. It's work that she finds deeply gratifying, both professionally and personally. "I feel that I get so much more from my patients, and their families, than I give," says Dr. Coffin. "From each patient relationship, I take a little piece of material, and from these pieces I will make a quilt that will help me decide, when my time comes, how I want to leave this life. It's poignant, emotional, and satisfying to help people who think there's no way to be helped."

With a rewarding new career and a personal life enriched by her family, music, art, and faith, Linda Coffin couldn't be happier--or busier. Fortunately for DMS, Coffin has never forgotten the place that helped lay the foundation for her life in medicine. For years, she inspired her classmates from the DMS Class of '76 to support the Fund for Dartmouth Medical School by serving as class agent. Dr. Coffin herself has supported the Fund faithfully since graduation. And for the past four years, she has served on the DMS Alumni Council.

"I loved my experience at Dartmouth," Linda Coffin explains. "And as a scholarship student who wouldn't have gone to medical school without a scholarship, I feel a need to give something back to Dartmouth, and to give some of my time. Dartmouth helped me get to where I am today, and for that, I am grateful."

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