Dr. Pamela Sutton '69 has spent her life traveling and caring for people all around the world.
Pamela Sutton graduated from Pomona College in 1969 before attending the San Francisco School of Medicine.
Pamela Sutton ’69 has traveled the world to treat patients and speak about her work.
Pamela Sutton '69 continues to travel the globe and train a new generation of palliative care doctors.
Inspiration struck Dr. Pamela Sutton ’69 at just 10 years old when she came across a photograph of Albert Schweitzer holding a patient’s hand in what is now Gabon, Africa.
“Dr. Schweitzer was somebody who believed in doing good things for people who need good things,” Sutton says of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning physician and philosopher. She wanted to be someone who did good things, too. From that moment on, Dr. Sutton worked tirelessly to make her dream of becoming a doctor come true.
Back in the 1960s, Pomona College was one of the few schools willing to accept the advanced credits she accumulated in high school, and its stellar reputation for preparing pre-med students made Dr. Sutton’s choice to attend easy.
Dr. Sutton decided to major in French in addition to her pre-med classes because, she says, “all humans have a knack for making life harder for themselves.” Pomona’s study abroad program led Sutton to Paris and gave her the opportunity to travel around Europe in the fall of 1968. The experience, she says, was life-changing, adding that, “It was when travel first grabbed me, and it hasn’t let go since.”
After graduating from Pomona in 1969, she attended the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine in San Francisco (UCSF). She joined a class of 120 students at UCSF, with 20 women — one of the largest classes of female medical students the country had ever seen. During this time, she participated in a tropical medicine fellowship in Costa Rica, getting her first taste of practicing medicine abroad.
“I was then determined more than ever to make my dream of becoming a doctor come true while seeing as much of the world as I could.”
This determination led Dr. Sutton to pursue training in tropical medicine at the University of London to prepare for her move to Africa. But once she started observing hospice facilities, something clicked. Dr. Sutton finally found a way to be like Dr. Schweitzer and become the kind of physician who gets to hold the hands of their patients.
Instead of heading to Africa, Dr. Sutton applied what she learned to found her first hospice program in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Since then, she has become a pillar of the palliative care medical community, training doctors all over the world to provide dignified care for people at the end of their lives.
Dr. Sutton’s care has touched every corner of the world, from treating coal miners in the Appalachian Mountains to training Afghan foot soldiers in Pakistan during the Aghan-Soviet War to working at a feeding camp in Ethiopia during the famine crisis of 1984. Dr. Sutton’s life is a beautiful patchwork quilt of all the places and people she has helped, and she credits Pomona for providing that first experience of global exploration.
“Pomona embodies international integration and shows how inclusivity and connection can heal the world,” she says. “These challenges we are facing now are nothing new. It is how we survive it and grow together that creates change for our future.”
Looking back, Dr. Sutton says Pomona not only provided her with a solid academic foundation but also marked the beginning of her remarkable journey in medicine. As she continues to travel the world, she was motivated to participate in the Pomona Plan to support the College while also generating additional income for her retirement.
“Pomona took care of me by giving me a strong foundation for my career. It’s a dream that after all this time, Pomona is still taking care of me long after I graduated.”
To learn more about the Pomona Plan, visit our website or contact us by email.