Dr. Margaret Scannell started work at the Islands Community Medical Center on Vinalhaven in early August, taking over from Dr. Rick Donahue, who left after ten years. She will be the only doctor at the facility, which serves patients from Vinalhaven and other Penobscot Bay islands, although she looks forward to the able assistance of the center’s veteran staff. She will also be working with a new family nurse practitioner, Commander Daniel Aronson of the United States Public Health Service, who was posted to the island in June as a part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Ready Responder program. Dr. Scannell herself comes to the island from a federal program as well, being a National Health Service Corps Scholar, with a commitment to providing medical care in remote and under-served sites.
Irish by birth, and thus possibly island-focused by nature, Dr. Scannell comes to Vinalhaven from work at a federally funded clinic in rural North Carolina, working with the Lumbee Native American group. She has extensive experience in rural health care, including time in Maine. She worked for a summer in Brooks, as a Maine Ambulatory Care Fellow, doing research that first brought her to Vinalhaven. Dr. Scannell’s extensive experience in primary patient care has included many years working a registered nurse, followed by a return to school for a BS in Science from Framingham State, medical research, and teaching at Regis College before continuing on to medical school. She received her MD from Tufts Medical School in Boston in 1999, and she completed her residency as Chief Resident in Family Medicine at the Duke University Medical Center, which included a year in New England at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Hanover, NH.
Dr. Scannell is Vinalhaven’s first female physician, a change noted by the doctor herself.
“I now have a higher ratio of male patients,” she said, “compared to larger practices with a choice of doctors, where female patients will more often choose female providers, and the same for male patients choosing male doctors.” While this is a change, having a female doctor is not perceived by any to be an impediment to providing good care for all patients, and with her background in midwifery and other women’s care, Dr. Scannell also looks forward to being able to provide for more comprehensive services in these fields, including family planning.
She sees herself as contributing to the services that have recently moved the medical center towards providing more comprehensive on-island care. “We will continue the screening clinics, which have been popular,” she said, referring to the well-attended community programs providing screening for skin cancer, high blood pressure and cholesterol. She noted that the already effectively run facility is doing well, saying “the staff here are doing a very good job, and the island has got on well for over 200 years without me, so I have no intention of upsetting the program but rather mainly just look forward to adding to it.”
One change she is anticipating is participating in emergency calls that require advanced life support. Traditionally the island doctor is on call to ride with the ambulance if needed, which is a difference from most other locales.
A further benefit of her research background is that she is able to access considerable off-island medical resources by email for patient consultations. She has already done this with occupational health specialists in North Carolina, potentially saving patients a trip to the mainland for additional visits.
She is not swayed by the oncoming prospect of winter, noting “I have spent winters in New England before, although not before on an island.” In general, she finds the coast and conditions pleasantly “very like Ireland,” and feels the island will suit her well. Some of her other interests include swimming, with some competitive racing, but this is an activity she said she will not be pursuing in these cold waters, and hiking and cooking. While she is looking forward to exploring more of the island and the area in her off hours, she did say “I came here to serve the medical needs of the residents, not to retire, and I look forward to spending most of my time here at the center practicing medicine.”