The Tribune

Dr Dominique Marie Foulkes, daughter of former Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes, has been appointed to a leadership position at one of the United States’ premier children’s hospital.

She was recently named the medical director and chairman of Paediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Shaw Family Paediatric Emergency Centre in Bethesda, Maryland.

The emergency centre is part of the not-for-profit Suburban Hospital and is specifically designed to reduce children’s anxiety about hospitals.

Dr Foulkes heads the team at the centre and said she wants to use her position to increase the awareness of the hospital’s presence, “because we have a lot to offer”.

“I also want to do more community outreach, especially in the area of mental illness and behavioural health. We have been seeing a dramatic increase in adolescents with mental health issues and crises coming into the ER. While we can care for them effectively once they are here, it’s a pretty traumatic experience for both the kids and their families. I would like to partner with community paediatricians to see what we can do to prevent that from happening,” she said on the John Hopkins website.

“Additionally, I hope to build on our existing partnerships. We have such good relationships with community paediatric providers in the area; they refer patients all the time and we share feedback on what happened with their patients so that there’s consistent care across providers.”

Born and raised in the Bahamas, Dr Foulkes attended Xavier’s Lower School and St Augustine’s College in Nassau, before moving to the US to attend college.

She received her Bachelor’s degree from Morgan State University and went to Johns Hopkins University for medical school and residency.

Dr Foulkes did not return to the Bahamas after her studies, because she said she found love in the US.

“I met my husband in medical school and that’s the only reason why I didn’t go back. Now I’ve been in Maryland longer than I’ve been in the Bahamas,” she said.

“I actually had my oldest child just 10 days after I graduated from my residency at Hopkins. My oldest was 18 months when I started working here. I’ve pretty much worked here my entire career; I grew up in my profession at Suburban.”

And that is maybe why the Suburban Hospital remains such a good fit for her after all these years.

“I really enjoy my colleagues; I think that is a huge part of it. Everyone here is committed to giving high quality and compassionate care to children. Also, the setting is wonderful! It’s a bright and cheery environment, both for us to work in and for the patients. Overall, I think Suburban has such a strong commitment to the Bethesda community...and it shows in the overall approach to patient care,” she said.

In addition to helping the hospital to grow, Dr Foulkes also grew her family. Today, she and her husband, Lee Johnson, have six kids: a 13-year-old, 11-year-old twins, a nine-year-old, a five-year-old, and an almost two-year-old.

“As my home life shows, I really like kids! I like the innocence of kids and thought paediatrics would be a great way to make an impact on a lot of lives. I was actually inspired by a dentist who came to my high school to talk about dentistry. I had no thoughts about going to medical school when I was in 11th grade, but she was so inspiring to me. After meeting her, I decided that I wanted to help younger people, too. As a paediatrician you care for children of all ages. So I chose paediatrics and have never looked back,” she said.

And despite having such a large brood, Dr Foulkes said her family always finds time to enjoy things together.

“Despite the range of ages, we do a lot of family activities together. We go biking and love playing games. We are a big board games family,” she said.

In any downtime she has, Dr Foulkes said she loves to read.

“I read as much as possible. My favourite author is Isabelle Allende. One of my favourite of her books is called ‘Island Beneath the Sea’. It’s about the Haitian revolution in the late 18th century and it follows a woman who lived through the revolution and moved to Louisiana,” she said.