Gretchen AW Gooding, MD – 1985 President of AAWR, 2003 Alice Ettinger Awardee

Professor, radiologist, ultrasonologist

My mother and father having struggled during the Depression, revered education as of prime importance and honored service to others. They enveloped their three children in unstinting love, stability and great expectations. My brother, an investment broker in New York City, and my sister, a dermatologist in Los Angeles, and I took their values to heart.

As the oldest child, I was the first of my family to go to college, to become a physician, a radiologist, a professor, an ultrasonologist, I met my husband, Charles, on the first day of medical school and married him at the end of the four years. He got the money for my engagement ring by having a research cardiac catheterization, so he put his life on the line for me from the beginning. He has been there for me through forty five years of adventures, sharing an academic life, he as a pediatric radiologist and I as an ultrasonologist, constantly renewed by new trainees and new advances, with friends and colleagues in every corner of the world.

That first day of medical school changed my life. After medical school, we moved to Boston, began our family, had a fellowship in Europe for a year, then flew off to San Francisco, where our children thrived and so quickly and mysteriously grew up, left home, to be professionals in their own right ( one, an attorney, one, an interventional radiologist, one, a cross sectional imaging radiologist). Our greatest joy and pleasure has been their presence in our lives along with three bonny grandchildren.

We have been blessed with a long and healthy life and have lived through and enjoyed and been enriched by the golden age of radiology.

What would be your most important advice to your junior colleague?

Family matters most, work is the icing on the cake, opportunities abound, take advantage of what life has to offer.

What do you like most about your current life/career?

That I am Master (mistress) of my Fate, independent, with a perspective about what is important and what is not; That I have direct patient care responsibilities that afford a constant newness to the daily interactions with my patients, my ultrasonographers and my residents; That I can keep learning and expanding my knowledge in a field ever changing.

What are the challenges for the profession?

The lack of salary equity between men and women in society, in medicine and in radiology. The need for greater diversity in Radiology, including in radiologic societies and in their leadership.

Dr. Gooding with her three children in Yosemite when they were growing up:  Gunnar, Justin, Britta	Dr. Gooding with husband, Charles, Professor of Radiology at UCSF and Chief of Pediatric Radiology, UCSF, taken in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Gretchen AW Gooding, MD is Professor in Residence in the Department of Radiology at the University of California San Francisco