Lisa Adcock, M.D.

Spotlight

Lisa M. Adcock, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics—Neonatology

The decision to work with ill newborns was easy for Dr. Lisa Adcock—she fell in love with the babies. That was during her neonatology clerkship in her third year of medical school at Louisiana State University in New Orleans. However, the delivery room and the neonatal ICU might have seemed a strange place for her to end up since she was well on the road to becoming a professional chemist until her junior year of college. A biology professor challenged her to take the entrance exam for medical school, and Dr. Adcock's career path was forever changed. She came to Baylor College of Medicine for pediatric residency training in 1988, and her neonatology fellowship in 1991. She subsequently joined the Newborn Section at Baylor in 1994.

The main reasons she became a Baylor neonatologist include the partners that she gets to work with, the babies that she gets to care for, and the opportunity to remain on the cutting edge of medicine.

"No one should practice in isolation," she says. "The Newborn Section not only provides me with more than 40 partners with varied expertise—it also constitutes a group of friends who serve as mentors and always are available for me to bounce ideas (and questions) off of.

Then there are the babies (and their families)." What can be more exciting than being in the delivery room at the beginning of a new life? With 76 bed spaces in the Level 3 NICU and 64 in Level 2, "things are never boring." Working with families is a significant part of a neonatologist’s job.

Being a member of the neonatal team at Texas Children’s Hospital has provided Dr. Adcock with the opportunity to see new medical advances come to fruition. Inhaled nitric oxide, neonatal ECMO, and, now, fetal surgery in the form of EXIT (exutero intrapartum treatment) procedures in infants with airway compromise all have occurred while she has been at Baylor.

The combined goals of teaching, patient care, and research all take time. Dr. Adcock says, "My biggest challenge is to divide my time among the different responsibilities that have been given to me. I can’t imagine working in any other setting than this one, where opportunities are so available."