A member of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV’s charter class, 35-year-old Dr. Faun Botor is now in her second year of a four-year residency in psychiatry. A mother of three children, including a 10-year-old with autism, Botor chose to stay local for residency, and she’s glad she did. She recently took time off during one of her rotations at Desert Willow Treatment Center, a psychiatric hospital for children and teens, to tell us about her first year and a half as a physician.

“It is going well.” Her voice sounded assured over the phone.

“I feel well prepared…I think that by being part of the charter class we had to deal with a lot of unknowns. We learned to go with the flow and adjust…so we got used to adapting quickly to different sites and expectations, and I think that helped a lot.”

Recently, Botor began a month-long rotation at Desert Willow, where she works with children and teenagers who pose a risk to themselves and others. Her current schedule, roughly 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a few hours of notes in the evenings, is a cakewalk compared to her previous rotations working night shifts at both Rawson-Neal and Stein Forensic psychiatric hospitals.

“During my time at Rawson-Neal, I would typically get up at 6:30 a.m., make breakfast, take the kids to school, come home to study or do housework, then pick up the kids at 2 p.m., fix something for dinner, then get to the hospital by 5 p.m.,” Botor said. “And that’s when my professional work day began.” Between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., Botor met with newly arriving patients and worked until roughly 2 a.m. completing notes before being on call for the rest of the night.

“I would go to bed with a pager on my hip, answering calls from the nursing staff at Rawson-Neal as well as the Stein Forensic Hospital for psychiatric patients who are incarcerated. So essentially you’re on call for two separate hospitals, and you receive pages throughout the night from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.” The calls can be as simple as someone is having a hard time sleeping to someone having acute psychotic agitation; maybe they are suicidal or homicidal…it could be any of those.”

Right now, Botor considers her workload challenging but not unmanageable.

“Luckily in psychiatry, our workload tends to be a little less than other specialties, partly because we have four years of residency, whereas a lot of residencies have three.”

It also helps, Botor says, that she wasn’t exhausted after medical school. She credits the Kerkorian School of Medicine for making student wellness a priority to relieve some of the immense pressure that comes with medical school.

Botor feels lucky to be doing her residency in Southern Nevada and plans to stay. “I like living in Las Vegas; there is not a lot of outside stress. For example, in California, housing prices and things like that. On the East Coast, the residency programs tend to be heavily research-based, and they typically tend to work more hours, so that wouldn’t fit my lifestyle. I am very happy here. The facilities give us a great learning environment; the faculty psychiatrists I work with are excellent. I feel like this residency program matches my personality and gives me the amount of supervision I need while also giving me a level of autonomy that helps me grow as my own physician.”

She’s grown so much, she’s already defining a career path. “Am I still fired up about medicine? I am, but it’s a different type of passion. As a medical student, you come in ready to cure the world. But now that I’m in residency, I’m alarmed by the desperate need for more mental health resources for all of Nevada. So my passion has changed a little to how can we help our patients as well as influence lawmakers, insurers, and the community as a whole to help patients down the line.

"I have joined the Nevada Psychiatric Association. I’m currently a voting member of the executive council, and one of the things we do is lobby for mental health services at the legislative level because Nevada is at the bottom. So my passion has changed, but I still have it, which I didn’t necessarily expect to have at this point. As I go further down the line in my career, I want to be a part of that change.”

One of her earliest proud moments as a physician came after a judge discharged her psychotic, suicidal patient. Botor didn’t think he was ready to leave the facility. So she spent a great deal of time educating the man’s family about his mental illness. Printing out information in English and Spanish, teaching them the warning signs of suicidal thoughts, attempts, and the importance of compliance with medications and outpatient follow-up. “Even though I didn’t agree with the court’s decision, I was able to equip the family with all the tools available so the patient would have the safest discharge possible. The family was very appreciative and that really stuck with me.”

Botor occasionally hears from some of her medical school classmates and sees some of the 18 who stayed in Southern Nevada. “We’re all working hard, but everyone seems to be doing well.” The group is hoping to tour the recently completed Medical Education Building after the holidays. “Am I a little jealous that I didn’t get to enjoy it while I was a med student? Yes, but the charter class built an amazing camaraderie inside the old campus, which was basically one hallway with no windows to the outside world…it made us all kind of grow. The new building looks beautiful, and I think it’s what the school deserves. All the years of planning and discussion with lawmakers and donors…all of that work that everyone put in even before we arrived on campus, you can see it in that building.”

So, how does the Clark High School graduate like being called Dr. Botor? “Oh, it’s cool…I’m getting used to it,” she says. “Some people really have that hard transition, they still want everyone to call them by their first name. Obviously, if you knew me before medical school, I’m still that person. But honestly, I do like introducing myself as Dr. Botor. You know, you work hard for that.”