Although clearly a 21^st century woman, Jill Chambers, MD, is as much of a pioneer as the women who walked across the west behind Conestoga wagons.

 

A pioneer “opens up an area and prepares a way.” As one of the first women in Vanderbilt Medical School’s OB-GYN training program, Chambers worked — and lived — in an all male training program … surely that qualifies her for pioneering status.

 

Chambers continues to open up fresh territory with a new approach to pelvic floor repair, a disorder that affects one in four American women who have given birth.

 

“When I started residency, I was the only woman in the program. It was very isolating to be in an all male environment — you had to harden yourself a little —and learn to stick up for yourself,” she remembered.

 

Chambers grew up in a family that knew about adjusting and adapting. Her father, a West Point graduate with 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers, moved the family often as he served at bases around the country and abroad, including tours in Japan and Germany.

 

She moved to Nashville as a senior and graduated from Hillwood High School before starting the School of Nursing at Vanderbilt. She graduated from Medical School of the University of Alabama—Birmingham and did OB/GYN residencies at Indiana University and Vanderbilt, where she holds an appointment as an associate clinical professor.

 

After her training, she formed a practice with the only other woman OB in the city, Susan Johnson, MD. A year later, Johnson moved from Nashville and Chambers, joined by Marsha Montgomery, MD, and Mary Ann Snowden, MD, practiced together until 1987, when they stopped delivering babies.

 

“When I look back at the time before we stopped OB, I had small children, sons 4 and 8, and was chronically sleep deprived. During the time from the last year of training and the four years of delivering babies, I was always exhausted,” she recalled.  

 

“I realized that if I wasn’t there for my own children at that point, I would never get a chance to do it over — once you have missed that time in your children’s lives, you’ve missed it.”

 

Chambers said physicians finishing training now don’t expect to make the sacrifices of time that were just “part of the practice of medicine” a generation ago.

 

“I agree with President Obama that what we need is a nation full of Cleveland Clinics … organized to be large enough for professional management, where quality and excellence are important and rewarded with benefits to give physician providers a high level of professional satisfaction with their practice.”

 

She continued, “When I was in nursing school, I had a mentor, Dr. Ad Scoville, who I shadowed every day from 4 o’clock until whenever he finished seeing patients. He was a real Saturday Evening Post physician,” she said, referring to the famous Normal Rockwell cover.

 

“He spent time with each patient and took detailed histories, but he couldn’t stay on time — no one could.” She feels the current system that requires “staying on time” can restrict the practice of good medicine.

 

For instance, Chambers thinks it is a mistake for gynecologists to give only “focused” physical exams comprised of breast and pelvic examinations. “Why should I drop checking the thyroid on their annual exams? Why in the world would I do a less comprehensive physical exam, realizing that this may be the only time a woman will see a healthcare provider in the next year?” she questioned.

 

Chambers has done a “mini-fellowship” to update techniques and procedures for patients dealing with disorders of an intricate series of muscles, ligaments and nerves that interconnect around the urethra, bladder, anus, rectum and vagina, known collectively as the pelvic floor.

 

Each year more than 12,000 women in this country have surgery for uterine and vaginal vault prolapse, or falling, of any pelvic floor organs that occur when the connective tissues or muscles in the body cavity are weak or cannot hold the pelvis in its natural position. The weakening of the connective tissue accelerates with age, childbirth, weight gain or strenuous physical labor.

 

Chambers is currently utilizing a cutting-edge biologic medical technology for use in pelvic floor repair with natural material derived from the small intestine of pigs to promote natural tissue regrowth. The natural material supports the healing process by attracting cells and nutrients to the wounded area, enabling the pelvic floor to be restored and strengthened. Evidence shows that when the healing process is complete, the biologic graft is undetectable and has produced a strong repair, successfully reducing the need for multiple surgeries and providing lasting relief for women.

 

This new approach to pelvic floor repair is especially important given a recent FDA statement that warns women of potential complications stemming from synthetic or plastic mesh, which has historically been used by physicians to treat pelvic floor disorders.

 

“I refer a number of patients to Dr. Carl Zimmerman and Dr. Dan Biller at Vanderbilt, in particular for people who have severe or recurrent pelvic organ prolapse. We are very fortunate to have experts of this caliber in this community who make an important difference in the patient’s quality of life,” Chambers said.

 

Chamber’s two sons are now grown. One is a photo journalist for the Jackson Hole News and Guide, who fell in love with the mountains and the West; and the other is a scientist with a computer degree who writes programs for mass spectroscopy machines in proteomics using proteins to act as biomarkers for earlier identification of malignancies.

 

A gardener, Chambers loves to landscape with waterfalls and flowers. She is also studying painting and hopes to be able to devote more time to finding and defining her style, whether it is in oils, watercolor or acrylics. After years of pioneering new pathways, she’s enjoying the philosophy encapsulated in the title of her last painting class — “Loosen Up.”