KIM KEITH, MD, FACEP

Valley Health System, Virginia

ACEP Fellow Dr. Kim Keith and her husband have raised a family that shares the same mindset—work hard and play hard! She has six children ages 20–35, including three who have followed in her footsteps by going into emergency medicine. They’re very busy, but they still make time to have fun together. You can find them competing in triathlons, experimenting with new cocktail recipes, and waking up early to oversee the neighborhood 5K race on Thanksgiving.

ACEP Now: How do you fill your personal time when you aren’t working?

Dr. Keith: My husband and I are project people—that’s one of the things that has made our family successful—we love projects. Our current project is reviving a family farm. We have learned to raise chickens, and we have a huge asparagus bed. We dabble in fruit trees. That’s where I spend my extra time—farming. It’s fun, and [we are] trying to learn how to be self-sufficient, which is a skill that has been lost. If you can figure that out and leave that infrastructure for your family, that would be great. Now we’ve seen what pandemics can do, and if you had a place where, when everything fell apart, you had a place to go and could sustain yourself—I think that’s a worthy goal.

ACEP Now: Are there any parallels between raising a big family and working in the emergency department?

Dr. Keith: Absolutely! I always describe emergency medicine as trying to make order out of chaos, and I think that it‘s the same if you have a large family … Multitasking is the key to both jobs.

5 Fun Things with Dr. Keith

1. Browsing: My kids will tell you that Realtor.com is one of my hobbies. I’m always looking and seeing what’s out there.
2. Sipping: I‘m a beer girl through and through, but our family’s best drink that we’ve ever come up with is our version of a hurricane—we throw a Mardi Gras party like no other!
3. Exercising: I’m religious about exercise. I run before every shift. I dabble in triathlons, and sometimes I get to run them with my kids.
4. Go-to treat: Whenever my daughter and I finish a triathlon, we always treat ourselves with a double cheeseburger from McDonalds as our reward.
5. Looking forward to: I‘m looking forward to seeing all my kids get out on their own, being established, and knowing that they can take care of themselves. I’m almost there.