Dr. Nadine St. Arnault, '87
Anesthesiologist
Alumni Profile
 "Everyone
serves God in one's own little way; I'm just doing mine
this way." Not every medical doctor might characterize
her work this way, but this is how Dr. Nadine St. Arnault
('78), a Denver anesthesiologist, conceives of her own
professional stature.
For the past five years, Dr. St. Arnault
has specialized as an anesthesiologist for a medical
group covering five Denver-area medical facilities.
She is a member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists
and the Colorado Society of Anesthesiologists.
She likes anesthesiology because "it
allows me to be kind to people in a tiny way...I come
into a case, allay a patient's concerns about ‘going
under', administer some drugs, monitor the patient's
progress throughout the surgical procedure, and then
I'm done." Actually, she does a little more than
probably most of her peers. "I also pray for my
patients and for my procedures at daily Mass every morning."
As a woman physician, Dr. St. Arnault
is proud of the special strengths that women can offer
to medicine. "As a general rule - and this
is not 100%, because there are always many exceptions
- women are more attuned to the emotional needs of a
patient than men are," she notes. "Patients
are afraid of all sorts of things when they are going
asleep for surgery" Will they recover? Will they
feel the surgery? - and women can attend to these fears
and offer compassion more easily than men. Patients'
needs are not just medical; they are emotional and spiritual,
too."
Yet, because her contact with patients
is more limited than other physicians, Dr. St. Arnault
often must suffer as a silent witness to inappropriate
medical care, particularly involving ‘end of life'
issues. While she is greatly disturbed by the ominous
push toward euthanasia, she also sees problems in the
attitude of many who refuse to "just let people
go." "People get cheated out of an opportunity
for healing broken relationships with family members
and friends when they are on death's door and are wheeled
out of ICU for yet another round of surgery. It's not
right to be operating on ‘dead people,' "
she says. "There's a time to live and a time to
die. Problems often arise when patients or their families,
or even some in the medical profession, refuse to face
the stark consequences of human mortality."
As much as medicine and morals mix,
Dr. St. Arnault is vigilant about not participating
in any morally-objectionable surgeries. She will not
assist in surgeries for abortion, artificial fertility,
sterilization, or sex changes. Flexible scheduling arrangements
have allowed her to avoid any conflict.
Dr. St. Arnault had a life-long desire
to go into medicine, but she took a detour due to her
love for philosophy. After graduating from the College
in 1978, she obtained a Masters in Philosophy at Laval
University in Quebec, Canada. But she eschewed the prospect
of a teaching career and decided to head into medicine
"if I was to avoid waitressing the rest of my life."
She took pre-med courses at Indiana University and thereafter
entered its medical school. Her talents enabled her
to return to her native home of Denver, where she did
two years of surgical residency before entering anesthesiology.
But the love of ideas she will always
have with her, and she is grateful to the College for
having exposed her to "the beautiful, the exquisite
- things worth knowing for their own sake." "Attending
the College," she says, "was like smelling
the fragrance of an intellectual garden." "It's
been 20 years (since I was there) and I still delight
in thinking about those great ideas."
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