Dr. David T Notter, MD

Dr. David Notter is the director of the department of Hematology-Oncology at Wenatchee Valley Medical Center and a clinical associate professor with the University of Washington School of Medicine. After earning his medical degree at the University of Washington, he completed an internship at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY and his residency in internal medicine at Pacific Medical Center (Presbyterian Hospital) in San Francisco and in medical oncology at Stanford University.

sIt's hard for me to remember exactly what my initial thoughts were about wanting to become a doctor,t Dr. Notter says. sFor almost as long as I can remember, it's what I wanted to do, at least from age 9 or 10."

"This belief,t he says, smight seem in a sense like a ?calling’ of sorts. I didn't have any role models in my family for a medical career. The only medical experiences I had in childhood were staying overnight in a hospital after having a concussion from a bicycle accident at age 5 or …so. My main memory is a large nurse coming into the hospital room late at night and growling, ?Now be quiet and stop crying...your mother's NOT coming!’

"And, I practically burned my face off when my brother and I figured out how to make gunpowder with our Gilbert chemistry set, and ignited a flash bomb while my mother was at the hairdresser. I was about 8 or 9 then.t

Neither experience really drove Notter toward a medical career, but by the time he was in high school, he knew that he wanted a profession that could apply scientific knowledge to human problems, specifically human illness or suffering, which would satisfy his natural love of natural sciences and his desire for relationships with people.

sUnlike my brother (who concocted the flash bomb, and later became [of course] a chemical engineer), I didn't want to work in a lab, but I didn't want to give up science either,t he says.

Clinical medicine was a perfect fit for Dr. Notter. His choice to specialize in medical oncology was influenced by a lifelong friend who was a year ahead of him in training. Dr. Notter was accepted for an oncology fellowship at Stanford in 1977 and during those two years of training, he grew to know a large number of sgifted and committed physicians,t both in research and in clinical oncology. sTheir examples and teachings gave me the academic and humanistic foundations that I still honor, respect, and try to emulate,t he says.

The patients themselves, however, have provided the true inspirational force for the practice of cancer medicine for Dr. Notter.

sThis is true for every good medical oncologist, I believe, and allows the stamina and the long-term commitment which are essential for this privileged but demanding field of medicine,t he says. sAlthough most of the details of the approaches to cancer care have changed radically since my training in 1976-78, the principles of care and caring have not changed at all, though current workday constraints sometimes make such principles harder to see or achieve for individual patients.t

One of the most meaningful times in Dr. Notter’s career was after his junior year at UW Medical School when he was asked by Dr. Clem Finch (UW hematologist) to take a post-junior fellowship year and work with him in an attempt to develop an algorithmic approach within each subspecialty of internal medicine, for use in teaching medical students during their "Basic Clerkship" experience. The process was sremarkable,t he says, because their work gave them the opportunity to work with the department heads of each of the clinical medicine subspecialties at the UW School of Medicine.

sI was able to see the remarkably talented medical division faculty which had formed the cornerstones of UW Medical School in the first place, at its inception,t Dr. Notter says. sWe developed chapters in conjunction with such superb physicians as Robert Williams, Robert Petersdorf, Don Thomas, Wade Volwiler, Cy Rubin, Bob Conn, George Odland, Tom Holmes, Marv Turck, Robert Bruce, Phil Swanson, Claude Lenfent, Dan Porte, and others.