Internal Medicine
1935-2015
Dr. Conway attended the University of Michigan on a Regents Scholarship, graduated with Honors from the University of Michigan School of Medicine and was trained in Endocrinology at the University of Washington. He served in the US Navy in both active duty and reserves.
Dr. Conway loved to teach people who were eager to learn. He was very involved in educating diabetic patients as to how to make diabetes a small, controllable part of a full, meaningful life. His willingness to work tirelessly with his patients allowed them to take charge of their health. As part of that effort, he made perhaps the first video instructing patients how to live a well-rounded life with diabetes. His forte was the very ill patient with multiple diagnoses to be managed concurrently; many of his patients were in the ICU.
His belief in doctors communicating with each other promptly to arrive at a correct diagnosis for the patient was central to the way he practiced medicine. He loved being a doctor and a teacher and looking ahead to what new research could bring to medicine. His ability to incorporate that information and his joy in training medical students, residents and nurses made for more progressive and compassionate care for the patients of New Mexico.
For many years he hosted a symposium of current research as it might apply to clinical medicine. He served as Regional Governor of the College of Physicians; among his proudest moments was receiving the UNM School of Medicine Khatali Teaching Award from appreciative medical students.
Dr. Conway was trained in Endocrinology at the University of Washington, and joined the Lovelace Medical Center in 1968 as the Section Head of Endocrinology at the same time that I joined UNM SOM. I immediately invited him to join me and Bill Nye at the VA, so that we could create a joint three-institution endocrinology training program.
To further expand our faculty base, we joined the Nephrology faculty at all three institutions, giving us six faculty to teach Endo-Metababolism. We quickly recruited one fellow in each specialty, developed joint teaching block for medical students, joint clinical weekly rounds, etc.
Dr. Conway was appointed as Attending Physician, VA Hospital in 1970-88; Consulting Staff, St Joseph Hospital, and Presbyterian Hospital 1970-95; and consulting Staff, Dept of Medicine, University of New Mexico 1970-2000.
From 1976 to 1992 he was Chairman, Dept. of Specialty Medicine, Lovelace Medical Center, and then Associate Medical Director, Dept. of Medicine and Specialty Medicine until 1995. He retired from the Lovelace Health Systems, and joined the clinical research branch as Principal Investigator, Lovelace Scientific Resources, Albuquerque, NM. I believe he officially retired from LSR in about 2006, but continued to be a part-time consultant with them.
He taught clinical endocrinology with me to medical students, interns and residents for 40 years, function as a full faculty member in every respect. We conducted both basic and clinical research together, published many peer-reviewed articles in the field primarily of diabetes. He attended the annual Endocrinology meetings in Carmel (western Society of clinical research) for all of the those years. He organized and led the Taos diabetes Research symposium for at least 30 years with speakers and attendees from all over the world.
He was great friend, great colleague and great clinical scientist, and his presence will be missed.