StoryCorps at SHC: Tovah Kohl

Tovah Kohl: My whole family is in healthcare. My father's an administrator and my mother's a nurse midwife. And how my father got into healthcare is really driven by his background. My grandmother, Shirley Moore, met Joseph Goldfarb. They fell in love. They got married. And then when my father was one years old, my grandfather got polio and became a quadriplegic, which really defined my father's childhood. My grandfather spent the rest of his life in an iron lung, and he lived until my dad was 15. Seeing his father go through the healthcare systems in his own health issues throughout his teenage years, and learning how to be a caregiver and having empathy for people at all walks of their life and the challenges that they face. I don't think he totally planned on getting into healthcare, but he got his MHA. And my mother is a nurse midwife, but has always worked in public health, specifically migrant healthcare and public hospitals.

Being raised by both of them, it's been important values of people should have access to healthcare no matter their socioeconomic background, their cultural background. Every patient should be taking care of with empathy and respect and culturally appropriate care. Hearing what they find the most rewarding working in healthcare has really affected all of our career choices. My older sister's a nurse. My twin sister's a nurse. My husband is a nurse here, and I actually wanted to be a health policy advisor, write health policy for the states and do Medicare, Medicaid and work on some of those policy issues. And then I just ended up working actually in a hospital. But it's really kind of directed all of our lives and our values and why we all work in healthcare is definitely shaped by both of my parents.

Produced by Stanford Health Care with interviews recorded in collaboration with StoryCorps, a national nonprofit whose mission is to preserve and share humanity's stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world www.storycorps.org

Sound Editor: Emily Hsiao

We use a transcription service, and though we do check for accuracy, there may be errors. Please contact us if you have any questions.