Tim Rausch: A passion for people and primary care
December 19, 2023
Soft-spoken and unassuming, Tim Rausch, APRN, isn’t one to bask in the limelight. "This interview is using up all my tolerance to attention. I’ll have to hide for a week to recover from this,” he says jokingly, with a mix of candor and shyness.
Tim was recently named a Sages of Clinical Excellence Award winner. And in true Tim form, he took just one picture of himself at the awards ceremony. “My mom gave me an earful about it,” he adds with a laugh.
It was precisely his mother — and a TV series — that sparked his interest in medicine. “My mom was a nurse," says Tim. "We used to watch ER together and I'd ask her about the terms used on the show.
"Mom, what’s that? Asystole? CPR? She would explain everything to me. She worked night shifts, and I always asked her to tell me patient stories. I was probably about 10 years old.”
That history made picking a career path easy. “I knew I wanted to be in health care," states Tim. "So when the time came, I shadowed two doctors. One was a neurosurgeon. I also followed my mom.
"I realized I enjoyed having longer interactions with patients. It's more in keeping with my values and strengths. Becoming a nurse offered me the chance to combine the excitement of direct patient care with a more holistic view of medicine.”
After graduating, nursing degree in hand, Tim moved from his home state of Connecticut to California. “My first job was in Los Angeles. I worked in the intensive care unit and the ER, doing trauma. I planned to stay there for a year, but ended up staying almost 10.
"I loved being able to connect with people quickly. Provide reassurance when I could. Comfort patients and their families when they needed it. I loved taking scientific information and packaging it in a way that made sense to patients, who and where they were in life.”
But he also started noticing a worrisome pattern. “I was seeing a lot of patients dealing with the negative effects of poor primary care.
"I particularly remember one of my ICU patients. I got to know his family. They shared how difficult it was to get primary care in L.A. Their family member was critically ill because of a stroke. A stroke caused by high blood pressure the patient didn’t know he had.
"This brought me closer to the idea of going into primary care. I decided that I wanted to do my part to prevent strokes, heart attacks. Everyone in the hospital was like ‘Don’t do that!’ But I told them I wanted to put them out of business with prevention,” he jests.
Today, more than 10 years later, Tim knows becoming a primary care nurse practitioner was the right decision.
“It's a challenging profession, but I'm blessed to do what I do," he states. "You get to impact so many patients and families. It's very rewarding to be able to take care of generations of patients.
"I take care of four patients in one family. Knowing that they chose me is powerful and meaningful. To know that a thousand patients come to me when they're scared of something health related. That I'm their go-to guy. I'm honored and don’t take it lightly.”
Looking ahead, Tim plans to stay focused on prevention and humanity. “As a country, we need to focus more on preventive care. Go back to basics — good living and a closer relationship between patients and primary care clinicians. They know their patients best.
"They have the understanding and the knowledge to lower negative outcomes. Also, we need to have more human connections within the health care system. At the end of the day, it's not just about treatment. It's about connection.
"It doesn’t matter if a patient can afford a medication if no one takes the time to explain it to them and consider who they are and what their belief system is."