photograph courtesy Gastrointestinal specialists foundation
Top Doctor Spotlight
Editor's Note: Every year, the national medical group Castle Connolly produces a list of the best doctors in America. In the Memphis area, the 2022 Top Doctors list comprises more than 300 physicians representing 60 different specialties. Here, we introduce you to one of the care-givers who have been named a Top Doc time and again.
As a child living on his parents’ farm in upstate New York, taking care of the animals and searching for fossils on the property, Dr. Paul Bierman discovered his love for geology, biology, and anything else to do with science. So it’s no surprise that at the age of 5, equipped with a play doctor kit, he knew just what he aimed to do with his life. “I actually consider myself lucky that I always wanted to be a doctor,” he says.
After earning his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania, Bierman graduated from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and completed his residency and gastrointestinal fellowship in Miami, where his family relocated while he was a teen. After interviewing up and down the East Coast, Bierman found an opportunity in Memphis with a guaranteed partnership after two years. He couldn’t pass it up. “[My wife and I] fell in love with Memphis,” he says. “We’ve been here 26 years now, and I’m still at my same job.”
Initially, Bierman, one of six physicians at Gastrointestinal Specialists Foundation, thought he’d be a surgeon. “I always liked the technical aspects of medicine,” he says, “but I also really enjoy the clinical side. … GI was the best of both worlds because I still take care of patients every day and treat medical issues like cirrhosis and pancreatic disease. I also get to do surgeries, colonoscopies, upper endoscopies, and liver biopsies. Half of the time I’m in the O.R.; half of the time I’m in the office seeing patients.”
“We can’t separate our emotional state from our physical state. Abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea — so much of that is stress-related, and we all live such stressful lives and we expect so much out of ourselves.” — Dr. Paul Bierman
This balance between the technical and the personal has been integral in Bierman’s interactions with patients as he seeks to understand the social and emotional aspects of their lives in addition to any physical ailments.
“We can’t separate our emotional state from our physical state,” he says. “Abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea — so much of that is stress-related, and we all live such stressful lives and we expect so much out of ourselves. Often it shows up in our stomachs and in our bowels.” Hope, Bierman has learned throughout his career, is one of the most important treatments he can offer.
Meanwhile, in the operating room, Bierman has witnessed ever-continuing technological advancements, from high-definition scopes to PillCams, video cameras “about the size of a vitamin pill,” that when swallowed travel through the intestines and capture images while inside. This advancement in screening has allowed for better diagnosis and treatment of digestive-system issues like colon cancer.
Of course, Bierman admits, diseases like that can only be prevented when the patient takes the first step, like having a colonoscopy once they turn 45. “But people don’t know about it,” he says, “or haven’t been told by their doctors, or they don’t want to” — the list goes on why someone might avoid a screening — “so that’s always a challenge, getting people to listen to their gut and know when it’s time to see a doctor.”
