Maple Grove’s Leading Ladies

A peek inside the lives of three women who keep Maple Grove safe.

By: Cyd Haynes | From the issue: April 2011

Photo: Marshall Franklin Long

Dr. Pam Doorenbos

Maple Grove residents are fortunate to have three amazing women in high-level leadership roles related to fire, crime and health. In positions once filled only by men, these ladies fill their own shoes.

More than a Medicine Woman

Pam Doorenbos was born into medicine. She completed her first degree in psychology but soon followed the footsteps of her father, a family medicine doctor in rural Iowa. “I got into medicine because I was curious,” she says. “I wasn’t such a scientist or a fabulous mind. I was curious about how fascinating the body is.” Medicine runs in the family. She shares the field with two sisters as well.

Dr. Doorenbos is a family physician at North Clinic as well as Chief of Staff of the newly-opened Maple Grove Hospital. Her duties include coordination of the medical staff and executive committee. She is responsible for review and recommendation of positions and practices, reporting to the board of trustees and advocacy for physicians.

Doorenbos notes that medicine has become far less gender aware and hardly notices when it is a women who serves at any level in the field. “I admire the focused bottom-line, linear way that men think while I am thinking on the wider picture about options,” she says. “We solve problems in different ways. I find that men are supportive of women in general.”

Support has been important as Doorenbos leads the hospital through the ever-changing landscape that has become health care. When things get challenging, she runs. Not away, of course, but regularly, as a matter of health. “While I run, things get sorted out,” she explains. “With music I can run about three miles, and not a mile more, and then I want to die.”

She uses evenings to balance her practice and administrative roles. “Because I have less experience in this position than some, I have a steep learning curve,” she says, “so I’m always mindful and listening and trying to prepare well.”

“‘Do the right thing’ is her approach to resolving issues,” says Andy Cochrane, CEO of Maple Grove Hospital. “She is willing and able to dismiss whatever historical interpretation exists regarding relationships between doctors and hospital administrators. Her perspectives are fresh, forward-thinking and focused.”

Doorenbos sends the same respect right back to her colleagues. “I love the combination in my job of relationships with people and the medical field. My colleagues are all super smart,” she proclaims. “The new hospital is beautiful, and I would like to campaign for a room in the medical quarters. It’s a very nice unit.”

Pam Doorenbos

Age: 45

Marital Status: Single

Chief of Staff since: 2010

Role Models: My dad and an 80-year-old female patient of mine who ‘tells it like it is’.

Past Times: Running, spending time with nieces and nephews, having no schedule.

What others say about me: “She is approachable, easy to talk to, is happy to laugh at her very public coffee spills that stop meetings, and, she is short.”