Gregory Dobash, MD, is honored to be called a country doctor.

While he practiced in Philadelphia and its suburbs during and after medical school, in 2008, he happily moved to Schuylkill County. Today he’s living “happily ever after” pursuing his passion for caring for patients and training future rural physicians.

Dr. Dobash, who has a special interest in treating addictions, is a family physician at St. Luke’s Ashland Family Practice in Schuylkill County. He’s also the site director for the residency program based at St. Luke’s Hometown Primary Care and Dental in Tamaqua.

“This is absolutely my dream job, and I love what I do in Ashland and my co-workers,” he said. “I love my teaching responsibilities with the Rural Family Residency Program, the other faculty and the residents. This is the best of both worlds. I have a rural practice and teaching responsibilities, so I’m very happy.”

The program, located in Schuylkill and Carbon counties, is the first in Pennsylvania to enlist in the National Rural Training Collaborative. Dr. Dobash teaches residents who desire to serve rural areas to thrive in an environment that requires self-sufficiency. The program focuses on preventive care, community medicine and the basics of family medicine, such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, COPD and heart disease.

Five residents have graduated, and the three-year program accepts four new students each year – putting a dent in the rural physician shortage. With many local physicians nearing retirement, the program aims to train competent, caring physicians to take their place.

Besides seeing patients at the St. Luke’s Rural Health Centers in Ringtown and Hometown, Dr. Dobash accompanies the residents to homeless and domestic violence shelters in Pottsville.

“We see all comers regardless of their ability to pay,” he said. “Sometimes, we do simple things like renewing psychiatric and chronic disease medication prescriptions, but other times it’s more complex, like ensuring high-risk pregnant patients connect with an obstetrician. We helped a young Spanish-speaking woman diagnosed with breast mass get imaging and a biopsy. We ensured she was well taken care of, even though she was in a shelter. Those encounters make us feel like we’re serving the people who are marginalized and in the most need of care.”

Dr. Dobash has spent most of his life in northern Pennsylvania. Raised in Harvey’s Lake in Luzerne County, he went to Wilkes College, where he met his wife, Stacy. He attended the Drexel University College of Medicine and after graduating, joined its family medicine faculty for about five years.

In 2008, he accepted a position with St. Catherine’s, practicing in Ringtown until the small hospital system went bankrupt and closed.

“Then, I got a call from St. Luke’s,” he said. “And they essentially said we understand you’re a doctor without a practice. How can St. Luke’s be part of your happily ever after story?”

Dr. Dobash enjoys living in the country, where his most frequent guests are the deer, bear and wild turkeys that visit his yard. He prefers rural medicine because he can practice the full scope of family medicine.

“The primary care physician is vital to the whole medical process,” he said. “A primary care physician knows you over time and understands how your disease process affects you physically, emotionally and financially. We know how it affects your family.”

Also, Dr. Dobash understands that physical illness, including symptoms like pain, affects patients’ mental health. In turn, behavioral health can cause or worsen physical diseases and symptoms.

“Unfortunately, in rural Pennsylvania, we don’t have a lot of psychiatric backup,” he said. “Our motto in our Rural Family Medicine Residency Program is that if you don’t have the resource become the resource.” So, Dr. Dobash studied and became certified in addiction medicine.

“By necessity, I needed to become comfortable with managing anxiety and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder, and all of those co-occurring disorders that play into the disease of addiction,” he said. “It’s very rare that I would see someone with the disease of addiction that does not have a co-occurring mental illness. And, if you treat only one of the two, either the mental illness or the addiction, the other ones will not get better.”