Doctors' Day: Celebrating the physicians who bring healing and hope

On Doctors' Day, we honor the physicians across Ascension Florida who bring compassion, skill and presence to every patient they serve.

Whether taking time to listen, answer questions, hold a hand or offer a prayer, our physicians reveal God's healing presence in powerful and lasting ways. Patients feel it. Families remember it. Communities depend on it.

Every day, patients' lives are changed by the care they receive. Behind each story is a physician living our Mission to serve all with special attention to those who need it most.

Called to care

When Dr. Martin Martino was 4, he watched his mother fight gynecologic cancer. Thankfully, she was surrounded by a care team that listened and cared for her, ensuring she received promising new treatment that put her cancer in remission. After graduating from medical school, Dr. Martin Martino trained to become a gynecologic oncologist and cancer surgeon, like the doctors who helped care for his mom.

Now a Medical Director of Gynecologic Oncology and Advanced Women's Health at St. Vincent's Riverside, he continues to draw on his early experience of caring for a loved one with cancer by helping support patients throughout their cancer journey and beyond. He knows he's exactly where he was meant to be.

Mission based care for the next generation of doctors

Dr. Joshua Hodge's Mission is a call to care for underserved communities in rural areas, a passion he works to instill in his students as he helps to build future doctors through Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast's Family Medicine Residency program.

Doctors in the program get hands-on experience working in low-cost sliding fee scale and free clinics, Sacred Heart Emerald Coast and dermatology as well as other medical offices in the area. The goal is for these doctors to finish their residency program able to meet a wide variety of patient needs in rural areas who may only have access to their care.

Dr. Hodge's passion earned him a place on the Board of Directors for the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors. The residency program is in its second year with 12 doctors and will expand to 18 in July while also adding new sites of care.

Family Medicine Residency program celebrates one year of service to the community

Hope in difficult moments

When patients face their most challenging diagnoses, one physician has made it a practice to meet them where they are, offering more than treatment.

Dr. Alex Brown, oncologist and hematologist at the Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola Cancer Center, strives to always make a personal connection with his patients.

For him, an essential part of cancer care is empathy for what the patient is going through.

"That drives you to learn; it drives you to understand everything you can about the disease that you're trying to treat," Dr. Brown said. "It will keep you motivated to be with that patient when things are tough."

We are grateful for our physicians' talents, knowledge and willingness to serve. Their dedication makes all our lives better.

To every physician across Ascension Florida: thank you for the healing you bring and the hope you restore.