Last week Nantucket Cottage Hospital welcomed Deborah Moss-Gail, Nurse Practitioner, as one of the island’s newest family medicine providers at NCH’s primary care clinic.

Prior to joining NCH, Deborah was a professor at Temple University College of Public Health’s Department of Nursing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is joined on Nantucket by her husband, Bryant Gail, and their 18-month old daughter Hannah.

“Nantucket is an incredibly special place to our family,” said Moss-Gail. “My husband’s grandmother lived here for 40 years, so he grew up spending every holiday and summer on the island, now, having the opportunity to practice medicine here and raise our daughter here was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.

As a fluent Spanish speaker, Deborah spent nearly a decade practicing medicine in Federally Qualified Health Centers, providing care to underserved populations in North Philadelphia.

“I’ve worked in underserved communities where immigration status and language barriers inhibited patients from seeking care and it really presents a unique challenge for both the patients and the providers,” said Moss-Gail. “It demands a level of creativity and commitment to the patient, to really understand them and their individual needs, so I’m really looking forward to learning more about our community’s health needs.”

After years of caring for diverse communities with their own unique barriers to care, Deborah is quick to acknowledge the limits of her own understanding of underserved communities.

“Putting yourself in a position to learn and listen is the best place to start when joining a new community,” said Deborah. “Patients need someone that will listen to them, understand them, and value what they care about.”

For Deborah, while the longstanding connections to Nantucket were a strong factor for making this island her new home, the potential of working with the diverse array of patients that call Nantucket home was the single greatest factor motivating her.

“That’s real primary care, and it’s what excites me the most coming here, applying that creativity and willingness to learn, to find treatments and work with patients to find solutions that work best for them,” said Deborah.

“Deborah’s addition to Nantucket Cottage Hospital comes at a time when we’re redesigning primary care here on Nantucket,” said Gary Shaw, President and CEO of Nantucket Cottage Hospital. “With Deborah in our clinic, we’re able to expand the number of appointments available to the public, reduce wait times and fulfill our commitment to every member of our community, by having a primary care provider uniquely able to understand our diverse community and provide the care best suited for each individual patient.”