The Woodlands is home to a rising star in the medical field – Dr. Beth Zhou – a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist at CCRM Fertility. The Woodlands Mommy caught up with Dr. Zhou this month to get to know the Houston native, Baylor College of Medicine graduate and women’s health advocate.
Q. Why did you choose to specialize in reproductive medicine?
A. I spent a lot of time in my high school and undergraduate years volunteering at the local women’s shelter and knew I wanted to do something related to women’s health. In my first few weeks of medical school, I was paired with a mentor who was a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility (REI) specialist, and I just fell in love with everything about the field. Seeing how she treated the body as a whole, not just focusing on the primary problem, highlighted to me the beauty of endocrinology, the way our hormones affect our health and our reproduction.
While social media and pop culture have helped to tear down the walls and stigma surrounding infertility and miscarriages, it was a much more taboo subject just a few short years ago. My heart broke for the people who came to my mentor who suffered in silence and in solitude, and I wanted more than anything to help.
Speaking to my nerdy side, as I went through my training, I marveled at how advanced our medical technology has become. The way reproductive medicine is practiced now is much different than it was when I first started and will be even more different in the upcoming years as we learn more about reproduction. I am so excited to continue learning and growing with our field.
Q. What do you love most about your job?
A. My job allows me to help build families. This might mean helping a married man and woman have their first or second (or more) child, even in the face of multiple miscarriages. Or it might mean helping a woman become a single mom by choice. Or a gay or lesbian couple have a biologically related child. It might mean offering a working professional woman the opportunity to freeze her eggs so that she can focus on the current chapter of her life. Or help an individual facing a diagnosis or treatment that jeopardizes his or her future ability to have children.
The reasons to seek fertility care are endless. What I really get to do is offer hope, reproductive freedom, and the opportunity to give people back the power of choice and a sense of control in a situation where they feel they have none, and that is my favorite part of my job.
Q. How do you ensure you have a positive and successful doctor-patient relationship?
A. I promote honest and open communication with my patients. Nowadays, it is very common to get medical advice or to learn about fertility through social media or through friends, so it feels close-minded to tell my patients to ignore it and to shut the world out. I would much prefer that they use these avenues for the support they need but also to prompt some great and thoughtful questions that they want to ask.
CCRM Fertility goes to great lengths to make sure that our patients’ care team is readily accessible, and our staff are so well-educated to be able to answer these questions. They are also great at reaching me to ask me whatever questions they cannot answer. In return, I will provide my professional advice and will have those hard conversations with the openness and honesty that they deserve. By encouraging open communication, my team and I hope to convey that we are always on and by our patients’ sides through the good outcomes and the tough news.
Q. What would patients say is your best attribute?
A. I have been told that I am pretty good at writing upside down! All jokes aside, I am a visual learner so I tend to draw a lot of diagrams and pictures at each visit and have gotten used to having to do this on the opposite side of the desk. Reproductive medicine is tough to understand sometimes – it took over seven years of full-time training specifically in this field! I make sure my patients walk out of every visit more educated about their bodies and their options than they were when they first came in. My best strength is in being able to concisely relay the diagnosis and treatment plan that is personalized to the person in front of me.
Q. Describe a moment as a doctor that you’re especially proud of.
A. As a physician-scientist, I am still very active in the research realm of reproductive medicine and feel passionate about furthering our field. Most of my research surrounds the field of oncofertility, or understanding how cancer and cancer therapies impact future fertility.
There was one particular type of chemotherapy that had a few earlier publications reporting that it did not affect reproductive potential. However, but I was able to show in my work that this conclusion is not applicable in women in a slightly older population and that there was a significant impact on the ability to conceive after treatment. There were a few health insurance companies who were ready to start rejecting coverage of fertility treatments for women who were going to receive this particular chemotherapy because if it had been reported previously that this chemotherapy did not lead to infertility, so the fertility treatment was not a medical necessity. We pointed them to my research to make them change their policies to then allow for coverage of fertility treatments for these women facing chemotherapy.
I am proud that my efforts in research has had long-lasting and life-changing impact for hundreds if not thousands of women who may now have improved access to the technology they need to preserve their fertility.
Q. What do you like to do outside of work?
A. As residents of The Woodlands (yay Creekside!), my husband, two-year-old daughter, dog, and I love exploring the hundreds of trails in our community. We are also major foodies and will drive all across the greater Houston area for good food. We are huge Disney nerds – I am usually wearing some sort of Disney attire every day – and take every opportunity to visit what I call my second home (the parks).
