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Children have been a lifelong focus for Dr. RickerBeverly Ricker, MD, the new pediatrician at New Ulm Medical Center, definitely had a different sort of mid-life crisis than most. She didn’t dye her hair, buy a convertible and take up line dancing. She decided to go to medical school. “In fact, my daughter started college at Gustavus Adolphus the same week I started medical school,” Ricker said. “I had always wanted to go to medical school, but I married young and had kids young.” Originally from New York, Ricker’s father was in the army and they moved all over the eastern half of the country. His final assignment was in Minneapolis and that was where the family stayed put. “My focus has always been on kids,” Ricker said. “Prior to medical school I taught algebra, geometry, pre-calculus and general math. I always liked the kids who had trouble learning and I had to help them, or the kids who were fascinated and asked all kinds of questions. I tended to teach the advanced classes.” With a close rapport with children to begin with, medical school experiences helped her define her specialty further. “From my cynical point of view, by the end of medical school, I decided I didn’t want to take care of anyone who needed medical attention due to their own fault,” she said. “I just really like being a child advocate and trying to get the best care possible for children.” Ricker is coming to New Ulm from Jamestown, North Dakota where she worked at the Anne Carlsen Center; she also worked at Gillette Children’s Hospital in St. Paul. The Anne Carlsen Center is more of a school than a hospital, Ricker explained, for children with complex medical needs who live so remotely in North Dakota that they can’t access the medical care they need. “Kids with multiple medical problems need a medical home and a primary care physician who can coordinate all the facets of that child’s needs,” Ricker said. Those kinds of cases have been about 25 percent of her practice. “I also like to take care of perfectly happy, healthy kids with a good prognosis. I don’t like to take care of only kids with serious conditions,” Ricker said. “I have had a nice mix in Jamestown and hope to have a nice mix in New Ulm.” An area of special interest for Dr. Ricker is children with asthma. Ricker is excited to be relocating closer to the Twin Cities where her mother resides in a nursing home, her daughter and grandchildren live, her sister and two sisters-in-law live. “We did not want to live in the city. We wanted to be in a smaller town and New Ulm is about the same size as Jamestown,” Ricker said. The mix of rural and town people that you see in a setting such as New Ulm is the kind of variety that Ricker enjoys. “I worked briefly in Edina and seeing nothing but yuppies can get to be pretty boring.” Ricker and her husband have a retirement home near Deer River on a lake that they share only with the birds and fish. One weekend this summer, Ricker said, “the lake belonged to us and about 200 birds. We don’t fish – we leave the fish for the eagles. It’s more exciting to watch the eagles score than to catch them ourselves.” Her spare time is often spent doing needlework – cross stitch and needlepoint. When there isn’t a needle and thread in her hands, there is a camera. “I like to take pictures of kids and scenery. I have a couple pictures from Iceland and Mongolia that I had blown up to two by three feet that will be coming with me to my practice in New Ulm,” she said. Traveling is very much a passion of hers also. In addition to Iceland and Mongolia, she has been to Korea, Siberia and the Russian far east, Scotland, Israel, the Ukraine, Lithuania, France and Latvia to name a few. She has also taught medical courses abroad, such as PALS (Pediatric Advanced Life Support) in Latvia. “I don’t like to just go to the standard places like the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre,” she said. Her husband, Martin, is excited to be moving to the German town of New Ulm, having emigrated from Germany when he was nine years old. “He loves Minnesota, but he loves North Dakota, too. That’s where he moved as a child when they first came from Germany.” Because of her teaching background, Dr. Ricker has served on the school board of two different school boards, having just retired from the school board in Jamestown in June. “I have also been on the child protection team – that has been very rewarding.” Dr. Ricker will begin her pediatric practice at New Ulm Medical Center December 3. |
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New Ulm Medical Center
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