After training at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, during her medical school years and completing her residency in emergency medicine at Indiana University, Laura Ortiz (Diffenderfer), M.D., a member of OUWB’s charter class, has returned to Beaumont, Royal Oak, as a physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine.

Ortiz has looked forward to working at Beaumont since she decided upon a career in medicine at a young age. In fact, OUWB’s affiliation with Beaumont is one of the reasons why she decided to join the charter class.

“I knew Beaumont to be a great hospital in the area I wanted to live,” she says. “Also, I liked the idea of attending a new school because we would be able to be pioneers of a new curriculum, setting the stage for future classes. We were able create our own atmosphere and family feeling.”

Laura Ortiz practiced a cricothyrotomy while she was an emergency medicine resident at Indiana University.

During her residency, Ortiz realized how much more she had to learn about both medicine and the culture of a hospital system. “Residency helped me become competent at managing multiple sick patients and delivering quality care,” she says. “I was a chief resident my last year, which allowed me to grow in a leadership role, too.”

As she returns to Beaumont, she hopes to use these skills she developed during residency to bring a different perspective. “There are a lot of ways to do things in the emergency medicine field that are correct, but the nuances are different,” she explains. “I hope my background will offer the residents a different way of approaching a patient, which will hopefully help them create their own unique practice pattern.”

Ortiz has advice for students currently working toward their degrees at OUWB. “Enjoy medical school; you’re with really great people, so try to spend a lot of time together outside of just studying,” she says. “Also, continue to work really hard when you’re on clinical rotations. Although you’re not technically the doctor yet, try to help out the residents as much as possible and figure out what qualities you’d like to model in yourself.”

Looking forward, Ortiz is excited to be a part of an academic health system – in particular, the one that began her medical career. For now, she is involved with OUWB Admissions, but someday she’d like to join the OUWB faculty, perhaps even as a dean.