Amanda Thomas, M.D.
Passionate Patient Care
The newest member of the East Jefferson Women’s Care team can’t believe her luck. Dr. Amanda Thomas joins seven other physicians and a Nurse Practitioner in a busy practice that delivers around 700 babies per year and sees women for OB/GYN care from adolescence through post-menopause.
“They’re a great group of people to work with,” she says. “They have a lot of experience and they all really care about each of the patients in our practice. And they always put them first. It’s nice to have a team and a family.”
After undergraduate studies and medical school at St. Louis University, Dr. Thomas was eager to return to her hometown and to give back to the city she loves. Following a long residency at Louisiana State University, she is finally settling in to a career she loves too.
“One of the things that is really special as well as really unique with my field is that you have the opportunity to build this longitudinal relationship with your patients,” she says. “That’s what drew me to the field — that vast array of opportunities — the chance to walk with your patients through their care and all their needs. They come back because they find someone they feel comfortable with, safe with, that they confide in and they trust.”
Dr. Thomas was extremely thorough in assessing where she might fit in as a physician, but nothing drew her in the way her obstetrics experience in medical school did. She worked with a family practice physician who saw a good number of OB patients and she looked the most forward to those appointments than any others.
“There was just this energy about it,” she says. “I knew deep down that I really enjoyed that more than anything else. But there can be this stereotype of obstetrics, that it’s a very difficult lifestyle, so I wanted to make sure that I had considered all my options. After going through every other field, OB/GYN was just what I was called to do.”
Being new to the field has its advantages. Dr. Thomas is coming in with the most up-to-the-minute training in technology, detection, screening recommendations and surgical procedures. She cites minimally invasive procedures like laparoscopic pelvic surgery and transcervical surgeries for uterine pathology and sterilization among the most current treatments in her field.
“There have been a number of changes in women’s health in recent years,” she says. “I want women to truly understand what is entailed in their exam and their well-woman care. There are a lot of misunderstandings or myths about what happens in an exam. One of the things I look forward to is explaining what is included in their exam. I want my patients to understand what I’m doing, why we are doing it, what tests are being completed and what changes are being made.”
Contrast these changes with something women have been doing since the beginning of human existence: giving birth. She is so excited to have first-time mothers and mothers new to the practice, and she is really looking forward to spending the duration of pregnancy with a patient and being present at their most precious moments.
What’s interesting is that Dr. Thomas thought she wanted to be an aerospace engineer. Her parents were instrumental in laying the foundation for a medical career instead. Her parents compassionately cared for aging family members; at times caring for them in the same home they were raising their family. “Just watching how they cared for other people and people in need, I think that’s what set me on my path to medical school, knowing that I wanted to be someone who used my gifts to take the best care of other people,” Dr. Thomas says.
And now that the people she is taking care of are her own patients, she is ready to dedicate her life to the practice.
“The learning always continues — every day you learn a little something new — but I feel extremely prepared and very confident from my training at LSU,” she says. “It’s exciting to wake up and see patients that are yours and have chosen to see you as their provider. This is what I’ve worked so long for. It’s a privilege to wake up every day and come to work doing something that you love and doing it for your patients.”
Medical School: St. Louis University School of Medicine
Residency: Obstetrics and Gynecology, LSU, Chief Resident
Memberships: American Medical Association, Junior Fellow American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
Amanda N. Thomas, M.D.
4228 Houma Blvd., Ste. 410
Metairie, LA 70006
Obstetrics and Gynecology
(504) 883-3770