Today, he devotes most of his time to promoting education and health policy for millions of seniors in the Philadelphia area, but he likens his clinical style to that of his father's: “focused on an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to care.”
Meanwhile, the elder Dr. Stefanacci, 76, is the administrator and part-owner of a 120-bed nursing home in Newark, N.J. He and his son talk on the phone almost every day about how to improve care for the elderly.
His son put it this way: “Anybody who's involved in geriatrics and loves it has some kind of a personal relationship to the field,” said Dr. Stefanacci, who was the American Geriatrics Society's Medicare Health Policy Scholar from July 2003 to July 2004. “I was lucky enough for the direct influence of my father and my grandfather. Clearly, geriatric practitioners are not in this field for the finances. It's got to be a love that goes well beyond that.”
Blazing His Own Dermatology Trail
Before Dr. Randall K. Roenigk began medical school, he was intent on avoiding dermatology altogether. He'd been around it plenty as the son of Dr. Henry H. Roenigk Jr., the former chair of the department of dermatology at the Cleveland Clinic and Northwestern University, Chicago, who now practices in Scottsdale, Ariz.
“I wanted to maintain my independence; I wanted to do something different,” said Dr. Roenigk, who now chairs the department of dermatology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “It was that rebellious thing that some kids go through. Maybe I was going through it at a later age.”
He had also toyed with the idea of a career in business. In fact, he scored higher on the entrance exam for business school than he did on the entrance exam for medical school. “At the time, my father tried to discourage me from going to medical school because he thought that medicine was changing for the worse,” Dr. Roenigk said. “He thought that in the old days when money was not an issue and doctors had complete autonomy, that was kind of the heyday of medicine, and he saw all the regulatory changes coming down the pike.”
In perhaps another act of rebellion, the young Randall chose medical school over business school, and ultimately focused on dermatology. “I realized that I shouldn't just try to go into something different just to be independent,” he said. “I realized that dermatology was a pretty good specialty to go into.”
After he completed his dermatology residency and fellowship in dermatologic surgery and oncology, he said that it took about 10 years to emerge from the shadow of his prominent father and to establish his own name in the field. “I've had lots of opportunities to get to know dermatologists and understand the specialty because of my experience through him, but also, because he's so successful at what he does, sometimes I've had to carry his reputation with me,” said the younger Dr. Roenigk, who has spent his entire career at the Mayo Clinic. “My impact on dermatology has been more in the area of accreditation and certification of our surgical training as well as in the practice of skin cancer surgery and reconstruction.”
The Roenigks have never practiced together, but in November, the third edition of their textbook, “Roenigk's Dermatologic Surgery: Current Techniques in Procedural Dermatology,” was published by Taylor & Francis book group. The Roenigks have also organized numerous dermatologic conferences together over the years (the elder Dr. Roenigk is the founding director of Skin Disease Education Foundation), but they don't share the same practice style.
“My father has an uncanny ability at being an astute diagnostician, and he is able to adapt to new techniques better than anybody I know,” said Dr. Roenigk, who also is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Dermatology and chairs the Residency Review Committee for Dermatology. His father “started out in a day when dermatology was predominantly medical and he described many of the most severe medical conditions in dermatology. He went from medical procedures—which he still does—to cosmetic procedures. He did hair transplants. He started doing liposuction. He's done dermabrasion and laser. He's someone who's been able to adapt his practice style to the needs of the patient and change with the specialty. I would say that I have adapted, but that he is able to adapt more quickly and in a substantial way.”
He added that his father “likes people to think that I'm his younger brother, because he doesn't like to think that he's aging,” Dr. Roenigk said. “He plans to work for another decade at least.”