Meet Marjorie Newman, MD

What drives someone to spend a life in medicine? In this new Q&A series, a group of leading local physicians share the moments that set them on their path, the breakthroughs shaping their fields, and the realities behind the work. Their answers are candid, occasionally surprising, and grounded in experience. Together, they offer a clear-eyed look at the people delivering care in our community and what continues to motivate them every day.

Meet Marjorie Newman, MD, Medical Director, Sansum Clinic; Chief Medical Officer,

Sansum Santa Barbara Medical Clinic, Inc.

Q. What inspired you to pursue a career in medicine?

A. I have always liked the sciences and have been fascinated by how incredibly complex the human body is. What inspired me to pursue medicine was realizing that despite that complexity, the body functions with remarkable coordination and resilience. Understanding how and why things work – or sometimes how they don’t work – captivated me early on, and studying medicine became a great way to turn that curiosity into something more meaningful. After an internal medicine residency and practicing as a hospitalist and internist, I was asked to take an administrative role and the rest, as they say, is history. Now, as CMO of Sansum Medical Group, my efforts are dedicated to improving the health care delivery system within our local Sutter healthcare system. If you think the body is complicated, the health care delivery system is a whole other level of complexity. Seeing healthcare through the perspectives of a physician, an administrator, and a consumer who will inevitably rely on the system more with advancing age – this has reinforced how essential it is to pursue meaningful improvements in how we deliver care. There is work to be done!

Can you share a moment in your career that profoundly impacted you?

One of the defining moments in my career, and I am sure for many others in health care, was the COVID-19 pandemic. What made the pandemic so daunting was how little we had to work with at the start – no masks, no testing capabilities, no known therapies or vaccines. Guiding teams through that level of uncertainty was both humbling and transformative. Everyone in healthcare felt the weight of the moment. The uncertainty, the lack of resources, and the responsibility we carried for our patients and health care teams was unlike anything I had experienced. As we know, adversity can give rise to something positive, and the care that our healthcare teams provided during the pandemic reinforced for me the extraordinary things that become possible when people unite around a shared purpose. Within a matter of days, we expanded our urgent care services and developed a triage and testing system and when the vaccines became available, we were among the first to provide vaccines via large scale clinics within the community. Our hospitalists worked tirelessly to care for the sickest patients in the hospital, and within days, our outpatient clinicians adopted telehealth services for our outpatients to ensure that all patients had access to health care, even when it felt like the rest of the world had shut its doors. It was a testament to our incredible health care team, and I am so proud to have been a small part of it.

How do you define success?

I think success is making a meaningful impact in whatever way you can contribute. Having that sense of purpose and showing up with integrity and compassion, with a side of humor… that is success!

What piece of advice would you give to your younger self starting out in medicine? 

This is no longer an academic question for me since my daughter, Katharine, is in her second year of medical school and I have had the pleasure to speak with her and her medical school friends about this very topic. I have told them that medical school and a career in medicine is an endurance test – it is a marathon and not a sprint, so you need to pace yourself. There will be moments of uncertainty and moments that will be overwhelming, but those moments will shape you into a humble and compassionate physician – so stay curious, ask questions, and never lose sight of the privilege it is to care for others.

As Sansum Clinic begins a new chapter as part of Sutter Health, we remain united by a shared mission: to deliver compassionate, high-quality care to the communities we serve. Together, we are shaping the future of healthcare on the Central Coast.

Sponsored by Sutter Health | Visit www.sutterhealth.org