Wilma Toledo
Decades
of Care Giving and Teaching
Wilma
Toledo, Jemez Pueblo, became a PA in the early years
of the profession. From 1977 until 2000, she worked
full time at Albuquerque Indian Hospital. Since her
formal retirement, she has been working both as a
contract PA in Albuquerque Indian Hospital’s diabetes
program and as a volunteer faculty member at the PA
Program at the University of New Mexico.
For much of her career Toledo has taken care of people with
diabetes. Currently she is working with diabetic patients
who are having trouble with their feet. For many years she
was on a team of five people, including two doctors, a
nurse educator and a nutritionist. She and the physicians
had their own panel of patients. If one of their patients
needed special care, group members referred the patient to
the appropriate member of the team, for example, the
nutritionist. If any of her patients were headed toward end
stage renal disease, Toledo referred them to one of the
physicians.
Toledo did and still does a lot of patient education. “If
people with diabetes don’t take good care of their feet,
they might have to have their feet amputated. I do a lot of
foot care and teach patients about foot care. Diet is
important in helping diabetics get better control of their
sugar levels. We emphasized exercise, which has been part
of traditional Native American life. We also recommended
going back to the traditional diet with less fat and less
sugar.”
Toledo enjoys teaching in the innovative PA Program at the
University of New Mexico. The class is divided into small
group tutorials in which students learn medicine in the
context of real patient problems. Toledo facilitates one of
the problem-based tutorials on renal function. She is also
collecting information on Native American traditional oral
health in conjunction with her work with other faculty
members in developing an Internet-based oral geriatric
health program.
A Family of Educators
The
opportunity for upward mobility drew Toledo into the PA
profession. She was a medical technologist at Albuquerque
Indian Hospital when she learned
about the Indian Health Service programs for training PAs
at Phoenix and Gallup Indian Medical Centers. (These
programs existed between 1971 and 1977.) Toledo had a
bachelor's degree in biology and an extra year in the
medical technology program at the University of New Mexico,
so she didn’t have to take all of the didactic courses. She
did her clinical rotations at Albuquerque Indian Hospital.
Upon graduation, she became a full time PA at the hospital.
Toledo's
father, Jose Rey Toledo, was a
great inspiration for her. He was a well-known Southwest
artist who at age 50 earned his master’s of public
health degree (MPH) at the University of California at
Berkeley. When Toledo became a medical technologist at
Albuquerque Indian Hospital, her father was a health
educator there.
Good
Career Choice
Toledo
recommends the PA profession as a good health care career
choice. She says, “Physician assistants are continuously
needed in the Native community.”
This
article was originally printed in the Winter 2007 issue
of
Winds of Change.