Today we’re speaking with USC Brain Health’s Advanced Practice Nurse Practitioner Rob McMahon.

McMahon has been a nurse for 34 years and a nurse practitioner for 26 of those years, serving both his nation and local community.

What sparked your interest in medicine?

At 18, as I started college I took a nighttime orderly job at a nursing home, turning patients, feeding patients and handling bedpans. Next, I became an EMT and discovered how much I enjoyed the technical side of medicine and having an immediate impact on patients.

Later I joined the Navy and also spent time in the Navy Reserves. I first worked as a corpsman, then a nurse, then as a nurse practitioner. I had a terrific 34-and-a-half-year-long career with the Navy. I rose from the bottom and retired at the executive level as a Captain.

A career highlight of mine with the Navy was the opportunity to work with the World War II and Korean War veterans, learning from their stories. It was here that I developed a passion for teaching. I had great mentors who instilled in me the importance of passing on knowledge, so I strive to do the same. They taught me how to bring up the next generation.

What do you do at USC Brain Health?

At Brain Health, I serve as the nurse practitioner with two main roles: administrative and clinical.

On the administrative side, I offer a clinical perspective to our leadership team concerning how we manage our clinics. I also work on the technical side of that by doing things like writing algorithms to improve our patient workflow. Additionally, I build relationships with our partnered clinicians by sharing information about the Brain Health Network and what we do.

I also work in the Brain Health Network clinics we've opened in partnership with Prisma Health. We are opening clinics in underserved communities around the state in partnership with Prisma Health and HopeHealth to serve folks who have cognitive concerns or memory problems. So far, we’ve opened five clinics.

When we first get a referral for a patient, one of our speech-language pathologists conducts a phone visit and then a one-on-one in-person visit for a focused, comprehensive assessment. 

Next, I see the patient, along with one of our community health workers. Together, we combine the cognitive assessment, my analysis of the patient’s ongoing health issues and, together with the community health worker’s recommendations, we develop a comprehensive care plan for the patient and caregiver.  

Our care plans, which we also share with the patient’s primary care provider, can include recommendations for additional diagnostic studies, referral to a behavioral neurologist, and recommendations for occupational therapy or physical therapy.

We also help our patients and caregivers navigate additional options for respite care, medication management, adult daycare and senior exercise or socialization programs at local centers.

I really see the patient and their caregiver, whether it be a spouse, a child or a friend, together as the patient, as one. We make sure everyone involved is part of the care strategy.

What do you enjoy about working for USC Brain Health?

I love working in rural health. People don't realize that there's a huge portion of America that lives in rural communities, and those rural communities have just as much right to quality health care as other places do.

The old-fashioned model for healthcare is that the provider lives in the community where they serve, which is what I do in Sumter, and I love it.

I always enjoyed serving in the military as well because it is a fixed community. Wherever I was, I was always taking care of “my people” because they were military people. Sumter and Columbia have large, retired military populations, so I really have a bond with a lot of people here.

And what about the team you work with?

I love working with people who have a passion for what they do. Everyone at Brain Health has that passion. Everyone's got a personal story about someone they know, a loved one or a friend, who's been impacted by cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease or another dementia.

We come together as a group of professionals to share our talents and work through complex scenarios with our patients. To me, that's one of the things I believe most of our patients appreciate is the fact that we are compassionate, we spend time with them, they're being seen by a team, and they're being heard.

We have a good time working together as well, but we’re very serious about what we do and the plans we have for the future of our program.

What do you see in the future for patients with cognitive impairment?

For a long time in clinical practice, I didn't have a lot of answers for my patients with cognitive impairment. There were only a few medications we could try, and they were fraught with side effects and had limited capacity to actually do any good.

I would have to tell patients, “I can't tell you how bad it's going to get, and I can't tell you how quickly it's going to progress.”

We are now at a time in medicine where we are making huge strides in research, diagnostics and treatment.  

We are in a time of major transition where we're actually getting some answers, we're making some progress and we're getting some hope concerning what's going on with our patients.

And that will shape the entire future of how we care for people with cognitive impairment.