New cardiac physician at Samaritan Clinic

Dr. Joseph Weiss became a doctor after an accident prompted the realization he was on the wrong path.

by Herald Staff Writer & CHERYL SCHWEIZER
| April 15, 2014 6:00 AM

MOSES LAKE - It was one of those things that should've been minor but turned out to be major, life-changing in fact.

Joseph Weiss has been in medicine for 32 years, as a clinician consulting with cardiac patients, an instructing physician and research physician. He recently opened a cardiology practice in Moses Lake as part of the Rockwood Clinic in Spokane.

There are two types of cardiologists, he said, those who perform surgery as part of their practice, and those that don't. "I'm in the second category," he said. He spent about two decades in teaching and research as well as consulting patients, he said.

And it all started with a fall. Weiss said it happened after a run, in the steam room in the Yale University gym. He was in graduate school, studying English literature. "I wanted to be a professor," he said.

Then came the incident in the steam room. "I was standing on a bench and I passed out," Weiss said. "I landed on my jaw."

His jaw broke in half, and pieces of bone pierced his brain. Of course he spent some time in the Yale University hospital, and discovered he wasn't so interested in being an English professor after all.

"At that point I had to stop and sort of assess my life," he said. What he found was that science in general, and medicine in particular, were his real interests.

Weiss said he went back to Yale for his pre-med degree, then to New York University Medical School, and his residency at the Columbia University Medical Center.

That was where the nurses voted him least likely to be sued, he said, which he found surprising. "We had some very brilliant people in my residency, including the current head of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control)" and Mehmet Oz of television fame, he said.

The nurses said he had a way of communicating with patients, of connecting with them. It seemed to work. "I met my wife because her parents were my patients," he said. His wife Georgette Pan also is involved in scientific research. Weiss and his wife have two daughters.

"And curiously, I have not been sued," he said.

His original plan was to specialize in hematology, he said, but "it's just too grim." Looking at the options he settled on cardiology, he said. After 10 years in New York, Weiss and his family moved to San Francisco, he said, where he worked with patients and as a research physician, and after a decade there he took a position at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. He worked at OHSU for 12 years, he said.

But "over time I've evolved into more of a full time doctor," he said. So he decided to look for a consulting practice.

His search caught the eye of the head of Rockwood Clinic, who was one of his former students, and the doctors in the consulting group offered him a job. It was an attractive officer, Weiss said. "Rockwood is a very high quality group. They're good doctors and they're in it for the right reasons."

He's still involved in research, he said, working with some former colleagues who are studying congenital heart disease, among other subjects.