2015 Health Care Champions Top Doctor: Dr. Marie McGettigan

For the past 23 years, Dr. Marie McGettigan has served some of society’s most vulnerable patients as a neonatologist. Since 2010, she’s been caring for sick and premature babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Cox South.

It’s no easy task, but it is one she is passionate about.

“My goal is to deliver consistent quality health care to these at-risk infants so that they can have the greatest chance of living normal and healthy lives,” McGettigan says. “I am motivated to serve and feel a social responsibility to the parents of these little ones who need our medical help.

“Often parents with a baby in our NICU endure an emotional roller coaster due to the long and arduous journey they will take until their infant is ultimately discharged from our care, so it is my pleasure to do the best I can for them and their baby.”

Through her participation in the CoxHealth Clinical Excellence Committee, McGettigan helped shape the future of CoxHealth’s neonatal care as the hospital system built its $130 million patient tower over the past two years. The expansion includes 28 private rooms in NICU on the ground floor and 32 private postpartum nursing and support spaces on the second floor.

“Part of my objective is to advance the concept that collegiality and teamwork should become part of CoxHealth’s core values,” she says. “I am committed to improving our physician-nurse interactions in our NICU and hospitalwide. Stronger working relationships between doctors and nurses is paramount to improving patient outcomes and satisfaction.”

In 2014, Dr. McGettigan received a master’s in health administration from Missouri State University to help further that goal.

“She has the respect of her peers as an excellent clinician, and is particularly interested in enhancing a team approach to care with all members of the intensive care nursery team,” says Dr. James Ceasar, president of the Cox Medical Group.

As part of her efforts, McGettigan helped Cox obtain Prolacta, a human-milk fortifier added to mother’s milk for the most premature infants.

“This is important because a pure human milk diet has been shown to improve the survivability of these at-risk infants as opposed to a cow’s milk diet,” she says.

Additionally, McGettigan is an instructor for the Neonatal Resuscitation Program at CoxHealth.

With a career that stretches from Maine to New Orleans and Tulsa, Okla., to Springfield, McGettigan takes pride in her research of persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn and the various interdisciplinary teams she has participated in to help better serve infants. But she’s most proud of the pictures she receives from appreciative patients during the holidays.

“The pictures are of happy families with NICU graduates ranging from recently born to 22 years old,” she says. “I am very proud that in some measure I have helped those families take their loved one home.”