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At 5 p.m., when patient appointments had ended for the day, Nguyen was still at her desk completing electronic medical records and responding to messages sent through the patient portal. She usually leaves the clinic after 6 p.m.

The 36-year-old family physician, whose Vietnamese name is Nguyen Ngoc Trang, is medical director of a CHI Health clinic under nonprofit healthcare system CommonSpirit Health in Omaha, Nebraska.

She oversees four doctors and three advanced practice providers, as well as nurses and physician assistants. The clinic serves nearly 10,000 patients each year.

Nguyen has also begun teaching in Creighton University’s Family Medicine residency program, where she mentors and helps recruit resident physicians.

Outside the clinic, she creates videos offering health information and guidance for Vietnamese students hoping to enter medical school in the U.S.

Her online community, “Vietnamese in the Medical Field,” has attracted more than 5,300 members. Nguyen stresses, however, that her educational content should not replace consultation with a doctor.

“I have always felt a strong urge to help people,” she says. “The encouraging messages and comments I receive bring me real joy and motivate me to keep creating useful resources.”

Born in Hue in central Vietnam, Nguyen moved to Kansas with her mother when she was in eighth grade. She arrived without knowing English.

Four years later, she graduated as valedictorian of her high school, was featured in the Wichita Eagle and received the prestigious Gates Millennium Scholarship to study biology at Creighton University.

Nguyen initially planned to pursue laboratory research. But while volunteering at a university hospital during her sophomore year, she discovered that she preferred working directly with patients.

No one in her family had a medical background, so although they supported her decision, they could offer little guidance on how to navigate the U.S. medical education system.

Nguyen had to work out the process herself, from choosing prerequisite classes and preparing for the Medical College Admission Test to completing her medical school applications.

After graduating with honors in 2012, she received a scholarship covering 70% of tuition at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Her medical training would include four years of medical school followed by a three-year residency.

The seven-year period, she says, was the most difficult of her life.

During her first two years of medical school, she faced an overwhelming volume of theory, weekly quizzes and four-hour exams each month. Material that might take an entire undergraduate semester to cover was sometimes compressed into just a few weeks.

Nguyen, who had long excelled academically, suddenly found herself struggling simply to keep up.

“I hit a wall of self-doubt and felt completely lost,” she recalls. “I wondered why everyone else seemed able to manage while I was falling behind. I began questioning whether medicine was the wrong choice and seriously thought about leaving medical school.”

Eventually, she took a month off.

During the break, Nguyen experimented with photography, paper-flower making and other hobbies, hoping she might discover another direction. None gave her the same sense of purpose.

By the end of the month, she had reached a clear conclusion: she still wanted to become a doctor.

Returning to school, however, meant catching up on a large amount of missed coursework while facing roughly US$100,000 in government student loans accumulated during her first two years.

“If I quit, I had no way to repay that debt,” she says. “With nowhere else to turn, I decided to commit fully to finishing medical school.”

She also changed the way she studied.

Instead of reading textbooks from beginning to end, Nguyen concentrated on mastering the concepts her professors emphasized. She explained lessons aloud to others and reviewed material repeatedly after one week, two weeks and one month, using active-recall and spaced-repetition techniques rather than relying on passive reading.

The new approach helped her pass her licensing exams and progress to residency, where doctors earn salaries while treating patients under the supervision of more experienced physicians.

Nguyen chose family medicine, a three-year specialty that generally pays less than many hospital-based specialties.

The U.S. continues to face a significant shortage of doctors, particularly in primary care, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Nguyen says her interest in family medicine can be traced back to her childhood in Vietnam, where a neighborhood doctor would arrive by bicycle whenever someone in her family became sick.

“Family medicine feels closest to my heart because I can care for whole families across generations, from children to older adults, while managing chronic conditions,” she says. “When someone needs specialized treatment, I can also help guide them to the right specialist.”

After finishing residency in 2019, Nguyen joined CommonSpirit Health.

Once wanting to quit medical school, a Vietnamese-born doctor now leads a clinic with nearly 10,000 patients per year in the US.

Michael Schooff, medical director of primary care and Nguyen’s supervisor, says she routinely works more than 40 hours a week and often spends evenings and weekends preparing for appointments or following up with patients.

He describes her as a physician who combines strong medical knowledge with empathy and effective communication.

Her ability to speak Vietnamese and her understanding of Vietnamese culture have also made the clinic an important resource for the area’s Vietnamese-American community, he says.

Nguyen believes perseverance has been the defining lesson of her journey.

Whenever she reached a point where she felt like giving up, she says, she tried to find another way forward instead. “Looking back, it was those small, persistent steps that brought me to where I am today.”

Christina Nguyen and her son, Henry Hoang, during a school career day. Photo courtesy of Nguyen