Natalie Luehmann knew from a young age that she wanted to be a doctor. A unique camp set her on a path toward achieving that career goal.
“I worked at a health camp called Bay Cliff in Big Bay, Michigan, which was a summer camp for kids with disabilities. … It was a really time-intensive job so it also kind of taught me a lot about, like, work ethic and completely devoting yourself to your patients’ care,” Luehmann says, a Marquette, Michigan native.
Bay Cliff is a year-round, nonprofit therapy and wellness center for children and adults with physical disabilities.
“I think working at Bay Cliff helped me make that decision, so I wanted to kind of get involved more on the patient care aspect and see if that’s something that I liked,” Luehmann says, adding that she also honed her social skills while waiting tables at an area diner. “That helped confirm that medicine was something I wanted to do.”
Luehmann attended high school in Massachusetts and earned her undergraduate degree from Cornell University in New York. She attended medical school at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan. She completed a residency in general surgery at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan.
Luehmann also is a breast surgical oncology fellow instructor of surgery with Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois.
“My decision to do breast surgery, I think, came because I loved the surgery aspect of things,” she says. “But I also realized that I valued that patient relationship that a lot of breast surgeons had with their patients.”
Luehmann completed fellowship training in breast surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital – Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.
Luehmann says her top priority when treating patients is to empower them by providing them easy-to-digest information that helps patients make better-informed health care decisions.
“I am trying to put myself in their shoes and understand what they might be feeling and what they might be understanding,” she says.
She says her years of training have prepared her to provide the first-class level of care her patients need and deserve from her.
“Medical training is a really long road, and after high school, I had to do about 15 more years,” Luehmann says. “For me I’m just really excited … to be able to practice and have my own patients and put those 15 years of training and hard work and all that extra time into use.”
Away from the office, Luehmann enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband Mike, their daughter Vivian, and their French bulldog, AJ.