This coming year, we will be highlighting personal stories from our members, celebrating the guidance and support they’ve received from ISCD mentors throughout their journey in the bone health field. ISCD mentors inspire and ensure the next generation grows and thrives in our community. Understanding the importance and impact of these stories, we want to bring them to life. View more stories.
Gillian Wooldridge, DO, CCD
Primary Care Sports Medicine Physician
Houston Methodist Orthopedics and Sports Medicine
As a sports medicine physician, or “jock doc,” I didn’t initially picture a career focusing on bone health. Despite my original plan to become an endocrinologist, I pushed much of that interest to the side when my career aspirations changed. The early part of my career focused primarily on the comprehensive care of athletes as well as musculoskeletal conditions in the general population.
My patient care and role changed drastically in March 2020, much like it did for many physicians around the world, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Life as a sports physician was very different when sports stopped and we had to cancel elective procedures to save gloves and other supplies for hospitalized patients. I found myself struggling to picture what I would do with my career if society didn’t return to what we previously considered normal.
Around this time our department administration approached me to gauge my interest in starting a bone health clinic. This had been launched on a small scale at another one of our organization’s community-based hospitals and provided a much-needed service. I hesitantly agreed and knew I needed to find an expert to guide me along this new path.
As I dove into different courses and programs to expand my knowledge base, I again crossed paths with a physician with whom I had rotated as a resident a few years before; a physician who is an absolute fountain of knowledge about everything from metabolic bone disease to animal behavior and travelling the globe; someone I frequently refer to as the “grandfather of bone health”: the esteemed Dr Steven Petak.
I can say with absolute certainty I would not be where I am in my career without Dr Petak. He encouraged me to pursue becoming a certified clinical densitometrist with ISCD and once completed, nominated me to the ISCD Quality Bone Densitometry Clinician Course curriculum committee then subsequently recommended I be added to the teaching faculty for the course. He allowed me to sit with him while he read DXA scans and pick his brain about complicated cases when I was stuck and not sure what to do. But I think I will always be most grateful for how welcoming and encouraging he has been for my foray into osteoporosis. He has been a tireless advocate for young physicians seeking to expand their expertise in this field and I am incredibly privileged to be one of those physicians. Thanks to Dr Petak, I get to be both a “jock doc” and a “bone head” and I cannot imagine a more fulfilling career path.
