Ever wonder what your doctor or health provider does outside the exam room? Our 7 Quick Questions series gives you a personal glimpse into the people of UVA.
Denise Way, MD, practices integrative and family medicine in Charlottesville, focusing on using yoga, acupuncture, meditation and other non-traditional approaches to help treat patients.
1. What did you want to be when you were little?
An inventor.
2. What’s one thing you always have in your fridge?
Fruits and veggies.
3. What’s the most unhealthy thing you eat?
Salt and vinegar potato chips.
4. What’s the most exciting thing/research happening in your field right now?
Medical yoga therapy.
5. Why did you choose your specialty?
I believe family and community have a deep connection to health — thus family practice is the area of medicine I have studied. I find traditional medicine is amazing and wonderful in many ways, but it falls short in some ways that are very important to people. I seek to change medical practice for the better, optimizing patients’ quality of life and autonomy by applying integrative medicine principles to patient care. I am currently an integrative medicine fellow at the University of Arizona.
6. What’s your favorite thing about working at UVA?
The constant initiative to make health care better.
7. Who’s your inspiration/hero?
Isadora Duncan, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Taylor Still, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Oliver Saks, Tina Fey, Isabella Allende and lots of others.
