L+M Physician Friday -- Dr. Preston Lamberton

Earlier in his career, when Dr. R. P. Lamberton decided to leave Rhode Island Hospital in Providence for a much smaller hospital in southeastern Connecticut, his colleagues thought he might miss the career satisfaction of a big academic medical center.

“Rhode Island is a big hospital affiliated with Brown University,” Dr. Lamberton says, “and when I was thinking about coming to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, some of my physician colleagues thought I might be making a mistake.”

Eleven years have passed, and the verdict is long-since in: Dr. Lamberton made a wise choice.

“I’ve really been happy with everything I’ve seen at L+M,” he says. “Whether it’s the overall care of patients, the quality of the medical staff or the quality of the nursing staff, I’ve just found that it’s a very good place to practice medicine.”

Dr. Lamberton grew up in Massachusetts, attended Yale University Medical School and advanced his skills in endocrinology in both Rhode Island and Albany, NY.

Today, Dr. Lamberton practices in the Joslin Diabetes Center at L+M, which is affiliated with the world-renowned Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, and therefore shares all the cutting-edge research and professional protocols of the parent organization.

Dr. Lamberton said he first decided to leave Rhode Island for L+M because a former colleague and friend, Dr. Stephen F. Quevedo, who directs L+M’s Joslin center, had encouraged him to join the thriving practice.

“I didn’t know what to expect – and I was a little surprised, but pleasantly surprised. I immediately liked the ‘community hospital’ feel,” he said. “It hit me pretty quickly when I got here – this is a special place, and different than the high-powered, big-city hospital setting.

“At L+M,” he continues, “it really is a system of care that is community oriented and not structured around a large major academic medical center. I just find that it’s much more personal and, in some ways, perhaps even more compassionate.”

Dr. Lamberton says he loves the southeastern Connecticut patient base and takes great professional and personal satisfaction helping patients control and manage their diabetes.

Diabetes, Dr. Lamberton explains, is a growing problem locally and throughout the United States because of lifestyle choices that are adversely affecting people’s health. In fact, many diabetic patients today could have prevented their disease had they practiced better weight control, diet and exercise, he says.

“Diabetes is a major challenge for providers as we try to keep up with the increase in the disease due to lifestyle choices,” he says. “The answer to prevention is pretty simple: diet, exercise and weight loss.”

Dr. Lamberton also strives to help pre-diabetic patients make the lifestyle changes that will prevent the full onset of the disease. Diabetes, in simple terms, is an elevated blood sugar level that affects the body’s ability to properly function, leading to potentially serious complications, such as kidney disease, eye problems and circulatory conditions.

“Fortunately,” Dr. Lamberton says, “we’ve come so far today that we are able to prevent a lot of the complications of the disease. With medication, we can keep the blood sugar controlled so that patients don’t suffer such damaging complications.

“The field is rapidly advancing,” he adds, “and we’re being provided more tools to take care of our patients due to all the advancements in knowledge.”

Applying that advanced knowledge at L+M, and watching as other departments take similar strides toward the advancement of care, prompts Dr. Lamberton to put L+M in a category somewhere between the extremes of a huge research institution and a small community hospital.

In fact, when he considers L+M’s affiliation with Joslin, and new affiliations, such as the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston teaming with L+M to open a new Cancer Center next year, he says that perhaps there’s a new definition is needed for a hospital such as L+M.

“The thing is,” Dr. Lamberton says, “I’ve been at a number of community hospitals in the past and I don’t think L+M is a typical community hospital. It’s very progressive. The medical staff is always interested in developing new technologies, new techniques, new care patterns for patients. So I view it as sort of a bridge – a ‘Bridge Hospital’ – between a community hospital and an academic hospital. It’s that kind of a special place.”

To learn more about Dr. Lamberton, click here.