Retirement Day has arrived at the end of October for Dr. Elizabeth Barot, a public health physician who spent the past 40 years serving residents and visitors on the island of St. John. A few days before her last day at work, Barot looked back on the years of service rendered to residents and visitors alike.
Her retirement comes at a time when thousands of rural health facilities in the U.S. provide urgent care without an attending physician. And unlike St. Thomas and St. Croix, St. John has no hospital. For those suffering medical emergencies, the first stop is the Myrah Keating-Smith Clinic.
But for much of her time, Barot and Dr. Joseph DeJames have answered the call anytime, day or night; DeJames, a family medicine practitioner, has 25 years to his credit on St. John so far. Most often, the first person to see a patient in immediate need is a nurse or a nurse practitioner.
“You just have to wake up and be nice to the phone so the nurses, wouldn’t be nervous when they call you. So, I’d say, ‘Okay, I’ll be there,’” she said, “and then they would ask for some order before I came.”
And by the time she arrived at the clinic, the first step in treatment was already taking place; except, Barot said, if the emergency involved a woman in labor. “If they call me for a pregnant woman I don’t wait for their explanation. I just go to the clinic because I don’t want them to deliver on St. John — although there are some people who would love to deliver there because they want a St. Johnian,” she said.
That’s how it was in the days of the clinic’s namesake — Myrah Keating-Smith. A midwife and herbalist, tales of Keating-Smith pictured her riding her horse across the island at any time — day or night — delivering close to 500 babies over the course of her career.
“I had the chance, the honor to meet her,” Barot said with a laugh, “She was so tall, and I was about as high as her waistline.”
Born in the Philippines, Elizabeth Barot came to California with her then-husband and child, working as a respiratory therapist. Around the mid-1980s, she said a friend told her that St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands needed a physician. Equipped with the results of her U.S. Medical Licensing Exam, Barot said she called St. Thomas hospital administrators to ask about a job.
“I called St. Thomas, and they said, ‘Oh, no, we don’t have vacancies,’ so I called them again — still the same. After then … they called me and said, ‘We need you right away — in three days. So, I said Okay, I’ll think about it. So, here we go.”
Barot took the trip and took up her duties on island Oct. 18, 1985, confident that she would serve and be a good doctor. The years found her on duty through hurricanes Hugo (1989), Marilyn (1995), Irma and Maria (2017).
“With Irma and Maria we were there with Dr. DeJames; the roof gave up and so we were there all night sweeping and mopping. That was an experience — it was fun,” she said. “For all the people who worked there, they all came together; even the husbands and wives. They all helped out.”
Now, almost 40 years to the day, she steps away from her service but not from St. John. “It’s nice not to have a call at night,” she said.
The social media page run by Schneider Regional Medical Center profiled their longtime St. John doc recently with these words: “As she approaches retirement, Dr. Barot reflects on the values that have guided her throughout her career: compassion, honesty and attention to every detail.”
Travel to Singapore and Saudi Arabia, and to see family in California, are on the agenda, then she said the plan is to complete the move into a new home on St. John.
To those well-wishers who asked if she would return to her native Philippines, Barot said no.
“This is my land. I am a St. Johnian by choice,” she said.
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