Opening Doors with Board Certification: A Conversation with Long Standing Diplomate Joseph Cook

By Aaron Burch

“I think, with family practice, the opportunities are endless,” said Dr. Joseph Cook, ABFM Diplomate of 55 years. “Board certification opened a lot of options that weren’t previously available to general practitioners.”

Since graduating from medical school at the University of Utah in 1962, Dr. Cook has served patients across Utah, California, Connecticut, and overseas in the Navy for more than 60 years. He was a member of the American Board of Family Medicine’s (ABFM’s) charter class in 1970 and has remained board certified ever since.

Dr. Cook has served a countless number of patients throughout his remarkable career.

“I initially planned to be an internist,” Dr. Cook explained, “I’d been on active duty in the U.S. Navy’s medical student program during my senior year of med school. I completed a one-year internship before they called me into service. I was quickly deployed to the Philippines, where I ended up practicing for two and a half years.”

During that time, Dr. Cook was a general practitioner in an outpatient clinic, providing family medicine care before the specialty had an official name. “I was going to go back to America and do an internal medicine residency, but I couldn’t deal emotionally with leaving the broad practice,” he said. “I wanted to keep doing pediatrics, and I wanted to deliver babies.”

Following his deployment, Dr. Cook and his wife, Nancy, moved to San Mateo, CA so he could begin his career as a general practitioner. Around that time, the specialty of family medicine was becoming widely known. Dr. Cook soon sought board certification for this exciting opportunity.

“I’m not sure when I became aware of board certification in family practice, but it appealed to me,” he recalled. “When the family practice boards came along, they made a pathway for general practitioners. [ABFM] gave me a year’s credit for my one year of internal medicine before the Navy, a year’s credit for my time in the Navy, and a year’s credit for three years of general practice in California. Together, those allowed me to take the [board certification] exam.”

Dr. Cook shared some unique eccentricities of the early board exams, such as examinees being shown videos of patients and being tested on what they observed.

“One of the tests was about a patient who lived on a farm,” Dr. Cook explained. “They had been around rabbits, cows and other animals, and now the patient had a fever of unknown origin. You had to think of the various things they may have been exposed to and run tests for them.”

“If you ran tests for the right things, you earned points. If you did the wrong tests, you’d lose points. I’m told there were some subsequent choices you could make where the patient died, and that was the end, but I didn’t have that happen to me. It was really kind of a fun examination,” he said.

Dr. Cook is adamant that board certification changed his life for the better. Working in a vibrant medical community between the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and Stanford University, certification opened doors that may have otherwise been closed.

“Board certification has been immensely beneficial to me, more so than I would have realized,” he said. “In 1971, I started teaching family practice at UCSF. That was a new thing, and I taught for years advancing from lecturer to full clinical professor. I also served as Chairman of Family Medical Clinics, a group of physicians, as well as two terms as chairman of the family medicine department and one term as vice-chief of staff for Mills Hospital [now Mills-Peninsula Medical Center] in San Mateo, CA.”

Initially, medical students were skeptical of family medicine. Dr. Cook often encountered young physicians who didn’t realize the breadth of the specialty. “I would take in my appointment book from the previous day and discuss the variety of patients I’d seen. It kind of blew them away,” he said.

After almost 30 years in northern California, Dr. Cook sought new opportunities. He served as Vice President of Medical Affairs for MedSpan Inc. in Hartford, CT, for five years before returning to California to become Chief Medical Officer for the Health Plan of the Redwoods.

Dr. Cook is a dedicated student of scripture, belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He’s privately published several books on the topic, and he spent three years as mission president in Philadelphia. Since 2005, he has served as a Quality and Financial Assurance Committee Chairman for the Church.

“It puts to good use my previous experience as a health plan medical director,” Dr. Cook said. “We monitor the quality of care and seek to control medical expenses for approximately 80,000 missionaries around the world.”

Dr. Cook and his wife, Nancy, returned to their home state of Utah to live in Salt Lake City. Since 2007, Dr. Cook has been supporting the Utah State Developmental Center, a facility that cares for individuals who have difficulty learning or engaging with society. Dr. Cook served as medical director for the facility from 2007 to 2016, briefly retired, and then came back as a part-time physician, a role he still enjoys to this day.

“I have to laugh,” he said. “Because the center was clearly worried about my age when I was hired [in 2007]. They asked how long I thought I could handle the job. I said three or four years, and I’ve been there 17.”

Dr. Cook enjoys his role as elder statesman. He makes a presentation each week about medical practices that he thinks will be of use to the patients. Recently, the physicians and nurse practitioners discussed the outbreak of measles in Texas. Dr. Cook was the only practitioner at the facility who had ever seen a case in person. “I’m the only one who had previously made the diagnosis. That was fun to share with them,” he laughed.

Dr. Cook, despite turning 90 this September, continues to practice medicine part-time because he’s able to do what he loves in an environment where he can help those less fortunate. When he isn’t helping others, Dr. Cook loves to write. He published a pictorial collection of his wife’s art, as well as a two-volume autobiography. Dr. Cook and Nancy have three children, 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren that they love to see whenever they can.

Dr. Cook, thank you so much for your dedication to board certification and years of patient care. It’s a pleasure to share your story with your fellow Diplomates.

Aaron Burch serves as Editorial Content Manager for the American Board of Family Medicine. He has been writing professionally in the health care field since 2014.