Dr. Diane Mueller, right, is pictured with her long-time secretary, Holly Bianco, at their recent suprise retirment dinner. The two retired on the same day, June 1. Submitted photo

Diane Mueller, a long-time family practice doctor, has retired from the medical field.

In 1989, Mueller graduated from Rush Medical School in Chicago. She finished her residency in 1992 and moved to the area after that. She has practiced for 31 years until she retired June 1.

“I actually went to college for engineering and got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biomechanical engineering,” Mueller said. “I worked at the Cleveland Clinic and in Chicago at Rush University for a few years in research before my husband, Rudy, talked me into going to medical school. He loves medicine and was my biggest role model as an MD.”

For Mueller, some of the challenges she had to face during her time as a doctor included having children while in medical school, and then moving from Chicago to Chautauqua County.

“I had two children in med school and one in my residency,” she said. “We decided to leave Chicago and move to a small community where the need for primary care was great, as well as to raise our children. We were recruited to WCA by then-Medical Director Lillian Ney. After moving here, we had two more children and found Chautauqua County to be a wonderful place to raise our family.”

Family practice is something that is very important to Mueller, and something that she said is also very important for rural communities.

“I took care of all ages from birth to geriatrics,” Mueller said. “I also did OB — delivered babies — for 25 years in Jamestown. Deliveries were probably one of the most challenging aspects of my career, but also the most rewarding.

“There was nothing better than to hear the reassuring first cry and to hand a baby to mom and see that instant bond and love between mother and child.”

With retirement, Mueller said she will miss her patients the most, especially the conversations she had with them; learning their life stories over time helped with their care.

Many of the families she took care of were multigenerational and extended, allowing Mueller to have kids, parents, grandparents and sometimes great-grandparents as patients over the years.

Mueller said she will also miss working with her secretary, who retired on the same day as Mueller.

“I could not have done what I did without Holly Bianco,” Mueller said. “We interviewed her as our secretary the week we moved here in 1992 and she retired with me on June 1. She was wonderful with patients and I was extremely blessed to work with her for all those years.”

While she has left the medical field, Mueller said she hopes in the future that medicine will move back to having some of the more personal aspects that it used to when she was practicing.

“I think the health care delivery system is unfortunately losing some of the personal aspects that are so important in medicine,” she said. “Now there are automated phone trees, kiosks, portals and telehealth, often missing the human connection.”

Mueller also hopes that the community will be able to recruit more primary care doctors and continue to provide needed long-term primary care services.

“I feel continuity of care is extremely important for good health care outcomes,” Mueller said.