“Take time to listen to the patient.”

A doctor’s life these days is filled with tests and test results, and Dr. Kristen Currie’s is no exception. She routinely performs cardiac catheterizations and interprets electrocardiograms, echocardiographs, and angiograms. Despite the complex technology essential to her diagnostic work, Dr. Currie insists the first rule of doctoring remains simple: “Take time to listen to the patient.”

“I chose cardiology because of its variety,” she says. “The cardiologist is part clinical practitioner, part radiologist, part surgeon. So much of the way that cardiology is practiced is evidence-based, but it is also intellectually challenging and personally gratifying.”

Dr. Currie majored in biology as an undergraduate at Brown University. She decided to attend medical school after spending a year working with clinical researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. That year Science magazine designated nitric oxide “Molecule of the Year,” and Currie’s team investigated the impact the compound, which is found in the body as a blood gas, had upon blood vessels and circulation. Her experience with patients, the investigation process, the new technologies and the findings produced by the study fascinated her.  She was completely hooked and has continued to publish related articles on the subject in medical literature.

Dr. Currie holds double board certifications in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease, and specializes in diagnostic coronary angiography. A life-long New Englander, she was born in Boston and earned her medical doctorate at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. After completing her residency in internal medicine at UMass Memorial Center, Dr. Currie remained in Worcester, having been awarded a fellowship in cardiology. She practiced medicine in Connecticut before joining the Berkshire Health Systems team.

Dr. Currie is married and regards herself as very much a working mother, balancing the demands of doctoring and a busy homelife with two school-age children. When time allows, she says, she and he family hope to take up skiing now that they reside in the Berkshires.