00:01 You're saying may have inspired a young girl to go into health care career.
00:08 It makes me feel like it was all worth it just to pass it on to someone else.
00:41 Hi, Dr. Legall. We love all of the things you're doing with your community, but can you tell us a little bit about Integrity Family Healthcare?
00:47 So I am a family physician, was born and raised in Houston and I've been around the community give or take a little over ten years.
01:00 I grew up in a very poor neighborhood. And honestly, I never saw a black physician or a black female physician. But my mother inspired me because one of the first African American nurses during integration to work as a nurse in the hospitals here in Houston, so you taught me my bedside manner, really.
01:30 I mean, building a business in general is difficult, but then in an industry as complicated as the medical field, can you talk about your journey and building this business in practice?
01:39 Gosh. So I was in pretty abusive relationship – marriage when I was in medical school, and I guess he wanted me to quit. You know, once I got pregnant with the first one, he really wanted me to be a stay at home mom.
01:58 I was just driven to to finish because I felt like one day I'm going to have to raise these kids by myself. And so, yeah, my my kids really inspired me to continue pressing on. And so I had three of them while I was in medical school.
02:15 When I was right before residency, I was pregnant with my fourth one, and so I started residency as a single mom. My self-esteem was so low I couldn't even like, raise my head up when I started residency.
02:32 And then it seemed like I put this white coat on, and all of a sudden people listened to me and I'm like, OK, I'm going to, I'm going to dress, I'm going to walk, I'm going to talk like the person who these people think I am. One day, it just seemed like the person who I was pretending to be. I became that person before I knew it. I was teaching other residents. And so, you know, just walking by faith.
03:00 How would you define your goal in life as a business owner? So there's something that you're ultimately trying to achieve?
03:10 I personally, I have six children. One of my sons is in medical school now, and so now I'm really focused on building my practice enough to leave a legacy. So when my son graduates? It'll be smooth sailing because it's been lots of ups and downs.
03:36 going on in the medical field, it's so unique and I would think it's an ever changing landscape for you. And so you're running the business, it's about people's health and well-being. So how do you manage that? How do you find that balance between that business side and that wellbeing side for your clients?
03:54 I feel like I'm a terrible business person because, you know, my heart is just to help people, but I just have people around me that can guide me and just keep me, keep me on task. So that's been very important for me. But as women well, and I would specifically say African-American women, you know, we're just taught, you know, be strong keep pressing through, you know, we're looked to so many times as the backbone of the family and we kind of stuffed our sadness and the fear and the grief.
04:38 We kind of stuffed it inside, but all these things can lead to a detrimental health and high blood pressure and overeating and just unhealthy habits that can really cut years off of our lives. And so I tried to make an environment for my patients to feel comfortable and stay.
05:08 I was doing some volunteer work at the local shelter and I had the ladies come in to the office and I just, you know, volunteered some office visits but just got them on personal choice of just leaving a bad marriage. I said I would love to just help other women just to be in a safe environment for them to move on with their lives.