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LAURA ROBERTS ANDREWS ALBERTON, MD
FORUM PRESIDENT 2023-2025
Member of the Month
by Juliet De Campos, MD
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Laura Alberton, MD, current FORUM president, is a like a swan serenely moving over the waters of life, while unseen undeneath, paddling furiously to navigate her many successful roles: orthopaedic sports surgeon, society president, wife, mother and now AANA board member. Speed on the water doesn’t faze her, our first FORUM member of the month was a white water river guide in Idaho for five years. Did you know she was in a Coors Beer commercial “Rocky Mountain Water”?
A native of Minnesota, Laura was educated coast-to-coast, starting as an undergraduate at Middlebury College in Vermont, spending summers guiding on the Payette River, with medical school and residency at the Mayo Clinic, where she met and married co-resident Greg Alberton. Together, they moved to to the west coast. Her fellowship was at UCSF, then she and Greg settled in beautiful San Diego. Laura is that rare person that found the perfect job on her first try; she has spent her entire career at the Scripps Clinic Medical Group. Laura was inspired to pursue sports medicine because of the motivated patients and ability to keep them in the game. Her favorite procedure is meniscus repair, Her secret to success in practice is her nurse of 23 years communicating with patients and managing Laura’s paperwork. “She makes me better.”
Like many of us, FORUM has had a seminal role in her professional life. Introduced to FORUM at a San Diego AANA meeting by Julie Dodds and Juliet de Campos, she joined 5 years later sponsored by fellow Mayo doc Diane Dahm and has been a member for 15 years. Through her father’s connection with University of Minnesota orthopaedic surgeon Rob Hunter, in high school, she met fellow FORUM member and legendary sports surgeon Eliza Arendt , which convinced her that orthopaedics was a career possibility. Sports was always part of Laura’s life: a high school and college swimmer, her favorite sport has always been downhill skiing. Her son Teddy followed her footsteps as a college rugby player. To watch: the Vikings, through thick and thin.
Her children were fortunate that she decided to work part time (2 days of clinic and one efficient OR day), so she was able to be available for them. Lauren, a graduate of Fordham, will start Ph.D psych training this fall and Teddy is an engineering student at Cal Poly San Luis Obisbo. Her favorite characters are strong, brave and smart women in health care: Dr. Quinn, medicine woman and Outlander’s Clare Fraser, a WWII nurse. Her solid, intelligent and calm temperament has been perfect for the increased visibility of FORUM, following Betsy Watson and Erin McLemore, in managing the transition from “secret society” to valued part of AANA and AOSSM. Laura is the perfect face of FORUM today.
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