McLane’s own superhero
Dr. Dominic Lucia connects with his pint-sized patients
By Stacy Moser
Photography by Rusty Schramm, courtesy of Baylor Scott & White Health
Dr. Dominic Lucia knows that most of his pint-sized patients are having a terrible day. Many have traveled long distances, are in a lot of pain and would rather be anywhere else than the emergency department at McLane Children’s Medical Center in Temple.
Dr. Lucia is something of an expert, though, on deflecting the anxiety he encounters in those children—using kids’ fascination with cartoon superheroes to connect with them and ease their fears.
“I started wearing T-shirts with superheroes on them instead of scrubs back when I was doing my fellowship,” he says. “I hoped my fellowship director wouldn’t mind and I could get away with it. I figured it was a way that I could let kids know we had something in common because I love those superhero characters too. She saw right away how well it worked. So now it’s kind of my uniform.”
Dr. Lucia knows a thing or two about children. Not only does he see dozens of them every day in his work as the pediatric emergency medicine attending physician, but he and his wife, Marisa, are parents to five kids of their own.
“I feel at home with kids,” he explains. “Because I’m a parent, I think that helps make me a much better doctor. I can relate to children and also to their parents. Because I love my own kids so much, I can really relate to how parents feel when their child is in trouble. Since I know how it feels when your kid is in pain, I can help parents get through it.”
In fact, Dr. Lucia says that if any one of his residents in training is not a parent, he recommends that he or she volunteer with their church, a local school or an organization that helps kids, like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. “There’s nothing like real experience to help non-parents learn how a parent might feel in a crisis,” he says. “At our house, my kids have had some minor injuries—thank goodness nothing too serious, despite a few ER visits—but that fear you experience as a parent with a sick child, it’s one of the scariest feelings in the world.”
An important part of Dr. Lucia’s job is to train his staff to communicate with pediatric patients and their families. “These days there is a range of treatment options for most situations. I think it’s really important to involve not only the parents, but the child in the decision-making process.”
Dr. Lucia says that when he enters a hospital room with a cartoon character like Superman emblazoned on his shirt, it automatically connects him with his young patient. He says that they relax a little and even smile when they see that he has a sense of humor about what he wears. The walls and doors of the pediatric ER are also wearing superheroes; colorful murals sporting characters like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Spider-Man are everywhere.
His characteristic sense of humor is probably partially the result of Dr. Lucia’s unusual childhood. “My dad was a rodeo clown who then began training animals for specialty acts,” he says. “Part of his act was performed with our dog and a monkey named Whiplash, who rode the dog.”
His parents traveled from rodeo to rodeo for nine months out of every year, taking Dr. Lucia and his siblings everywhere they went. He says that it became almost impossible for him to stay enrolled in school as a kid, so his dad decided he would be home-schooled, beginning when he was a sixth-grader. “My dad would mail-order textbooks every August in all subjects,” Dr. Lucia recalls. “I would read them cover to cover as we drove all over the United States. I was really driven to learn,” he laughs at the pun. “I’d go find a quiet spot wherever we were and absorb those textbooks.”
The fact that he was able to graduate from high school by earning his GED without attending a brick-and-mortar institution is evidence of Dr. Lucia’s desire to succeed. After graduating and working odd jobs, he was hired as a physical-therapy technician, and his interactions with other healthcare professionals sparked his curiosity about the field of medicine. “My interest in being a doctor probably first started after I experienced some tragedies firsthand as a kid,” he says.
“One of the first times I really considered saving lives as a career was when a bull rider was crushed to death right in front of me at a rodeo when I was 14. I felt so helpless. I couldn’t do anything to save him. Another time, I saw a friend die when he fell from a high-wire trapeze to the ground, 40 feet below. I couldn’t do anything to be useful in that moment.” From his perch on the sideline’s fence, Dr. Lucia watched with fascination as medical professionals worked on the victims both times. “It opened my eyes to a career I’d never considered.”
Dr. Lucia enrolled at Texas Women’s University (“Yes,” he says, “men enroll there too!”), where he graduated summa cum laude in 2001. He met and married Marisa during that time and together they agreed he was meant to be a physician.
“Without a doubt, she helped me. What really motivated me was wanting to impress her!” he chuckles. “I’m a person who, once I throw myself into something, I just go full speed.” Dr. Lucia pushed on with his education and was accepted at Texas A&M Medical School, graduating in 2006.
Dr. Lucia came to Scott & White Medical Center–Temple as a resident and was immediately drawn to emergency medicine. He became chief resident in his third year, but then another opportunity presented itself. He and Marisa traveled to Georgia, where he pursued his interest in pediatric emergency medicine with a fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Georgia in Augusta.
“We always knew we wanted to come back to Central Texas, though,” Dr. Lucia says. So the couple was thrilled when he was named director of emergency medicine for the brand-new McLane Children’s Medical Center in 2011 and they could return to Temple to raise their family. “It’s been such a fun ride, this last seven years here,” he says.
“My true north is helping kids,” Dr. Lucia adds, smiling. “I’m proud to be here, helping kids have the very best chance to survive and thrive.”
