Carol Teitz, md ’74, retired years ago, but she is still answering questions from former patients. They seek her advice on varied medical issues. “What questions should I be asking my cardiologist?” queried a man who had seen her for knee surgery. When Dr. Teitz reminded him that she had neither trained in nor practiced cardiology, he was not discouraged. “You know how to think,” he replied.
That’s something she learned at YSM, she says. As a professor of orthopaedics and sports medicine at the University of Washington, she set up a problem-based learning course using the kind of pedagogy she’d benefited from in New Haven. Her time at Yale began when she was a junior in college looking for a summer research experience. Robert Gifford, md, now professor emeritus of medicine, put her to work assisting in the development of a diagnostic blood test for chronic granulomatous disease.
Dr. Gifford would go on to encourage her to apply to medical school, introduce her to important mentors, and eventually even walk her down the aisle at her wedding.
“While I was at Yale, both Dr. Gifford and his wife, Karlee, became my best friends and surrogate parents. I lived with them and their four children during the summers and during my fourth year as a Yale medical student. Bob and Karlee Gifford taught me everything I know about balancing family life and work, marriage, raising children, and running a household,” Dr. Teitz wrote in tribute to him.
When a postcard arrived recently from Yale explaining how tax code changes would affect donors, Dr. Teitz, of course, started thinking. She realized that she could support medical students in the future, receive tax advantages now, and look forward to a regular stream of income by establishing a charitable gift annuity. It was a short leap to connect these thoughts to Dr. Gifford.
Through this planned gift, she contributed to the Robert H. Gifford, MD Medical Scholarship Fund, which provides need-based financial aid.
Thus, she is saying thank you for the financial aid that helped make her own medical education possible, paying tribute to a beloved teacher, and doing it in a way that works with her own financial goals. By putting some additional thought into her gift, Dr. Teitz scored a win/win/win.