Michael Mumford: Doctor With Heart

Dr. Michael Mumford carries with him the lessons of growing up one of seven children in Hopkinsville, Ky. One of the things he learned was to have compassion for others.

Mumford, 41, said he carries that lesson with him everywhere, even to patient treatment rooms.

“As a physician, I really try to treat someone as if she was a relative,’ said Mumford, a physician for 11 years. “I always say, ‘If this were my mother, how would I want her treated?’ ”

That kind of approach has given him a reputation among friends and patients.

“He is the most compassionate, sensitive man you could imagine as a physician,” said the Rev. John McReynolds, a friend of Mumford and his wife, Anita, who is a special education teacher in Santa Ana.

Although he works about 12 hours a day at his office in Santa Ana, Mumford also spends about four hours a week giving clinical training at his office to students from UC Irvine, where he had a fellowship 13 years ago.

And for the past four years, he has worked with a group of black medical students affiliated with the National Medical Assn. to organize an annual banquet to raise tuition money for them. One of the most successful events brought in about $10,000 in scholarships and attracted 250 guests to the Irvine Marriott, he said.

UCI, which helped pay for that event, has since withdrawn its sponsorship because of cutbacks. Those cutbacks have also resulted in fewer scholarships, said Mumford, who has since contributed personally to the costs of printing and banquet room fees.

Because of soaring education and malpractice insurance costs, and plummeting medical reimbursements from government agencies, Mumford said he is “amazed” students still pursue the field.

And that is part of the reason he helps.

“I think it behooves us, as blacks in general, to support those who know what they are facing and still have the burning desire to be physicians.”

Fran Williams, a friend and patient, said Mumford is “very caring, very spiritual. The best way that’s demonstrated is through his work with black medical students, and it has nothing to do with medicine.”

When her mother was terminally ill, she said, Mumford made house calls, a gesture she will always remember.

Mumford said a St. Louis doctor set a lifelong example for him 20 years ago.

The doctor performed surgery on Anita Mumford and treated her for a year thereafter--all for free--when Michael Mumford was a student at St. Louis University.

“There’s nothing I could give to pay him back,” Mumford said, “but if there’s something I could do to help someone the way he helped me, then that’s sort of paying him back.”