{"id":121067,"date":"2026-08-07T16:57:02","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/?p=121067\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T16:57:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:57:02","slug":"kevin-oconnor-white-house-physician-illinoiscom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/from-the-magazine\/kevin-oconnor-white-house-physician-illinoiscom\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin O\u2019Connor, Former White House Physician, Shares Advice With IllinoisCOM Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin O\u2019Connor, DO, is a graduate of New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, a 22-year U.S. Army veteran, and a former White House physician who served two presidents, two vice presidents, and their families. Dr. O\u2019Connor addressed the inaugural IllinoisCOM class during Welcome Week, sharing lessons drawn from his career. Centering his remarks on the advice that shaped his own path\u2014”Express the Interest”\u2014he encouraged the IllinoisCOM students to pursue opportunities rather than wait for them. Following his speech and a wide-ranging Q&A on topics including specialty selection and burnout, Dr. O\u2019Connor spoke with Insight.<\/p>\n

Q: Why did you choose osteopathic medicine over allopathic medicine?<\/h2>\n

A: If I had known then what I know now, I\u2019d say it was whole-person care, the whole mind, body, and spirit, treating a person in the context of their bigger life. But I\u2019d be lying if I said that was the reason, because I didn\u2019t know that back then.<\/p>\n

All I knew is I wanted to treat patients. I didn\u2019t know what specialty. I assumed I\u2019d choose either trauma surgery or emergency medicine. It wasn\u2019t until I did rotations that I realized that what I really liked was the word \u201cemergency.\u201d If you\u2019re in an emergency room all day, it\u2019s not like TV; it\u2019s much slower paced.<\/p>\n

I realized that, in the military as a family doc, I could still do the trauma stuff, the pre-hospital trauma stuff, and I could still do emergency medicine in the field, but then I could also deliver babies and take care of depression and all these other things.<\/p>\n

Q: How did you come to be the first full-time osteopathic doctor serving at the White House?<\/h2>\n

A: I saw [President George W. Bush] as a consultant several times, and eventually, they invited me to interview to join the team full time. I was selected in 2006. I did two-and-a-half years with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, not as their primary care doctor but as one of the other physicians on the White House medical unit team for nights and trips and weekends. I did two-and-a-half years, and it\u2019s a three-year tour, so I expected to do six more months and then go back to special operations, which is where my heart was.<\/p>\n

Because of my seniority, they asked if I would be the physician to the new vice president, Joe Biden. I said, \u201cSure, I can do anything for six months,\u201d but I fully intended to leave. Then his mom fell and broke her hip. That transitioned naturally to end-of-life planning, which is the bread-and-butter of family medicine. The vice president asked me to stay. I said, \u201cSure, sir, I\u2019ll finish the term with you.\u201d It was more personal loyalty than anything else.<\/p>\n

Then they went and got reelected, which ruined all my plans. It took me 10-and-a-half years to finish my \u201cthree-year tour.\u201d I retired from the Army, but he remained my patient. One day, he said, \u201cI think I\u2019m going to run for president.\u201d He asked if I\u2019d come back. How do you say no to a president? In all, I ended up spending 14-and-a-half years at the White House.<\/p>\n

Q: What would surprise people about serving in the White House as a physician?<\/h2>\n

A: I\u2019m not only there doing his primary care; I\u2019m there for the \u201cwhat if?\u201d We covered the president, the vice president, and the first lady, 24\/7\/365, anywhere in the world, and it takes a large team to do that. The real purpose of that job is planning. If we\u2019re going to go overseas to two countries and five cities, I\u2019m going to send a three- or four-person advance team to each of those cities, and we know every step he\u2019s going to take.<\/p>\n

Our job, along with the Secret Service and the military aid team, is to say, \u201cIf something goes bad at this point on the map, where are we going to go? How are we going to get there?\u201d I don\u2019t want to have to decide anything during the chaos; I want to already have a plan to execute. It\u2019s all a matter of constantly thinking about things that will probably not happen, but if they do, you know what you\u2019re going to do.<\/p>\n

Q: In your address, you said, \u201cMedicine advances one generation at a time.\u201d What do you foresee for the next generation of osteopathic physicians in America?<\/h2>\n

A: We have the fastest-growing element in healthcare. What we seem to be doing as a profession is putting most of the satellites out in rural areas, which represents a real opportunity given the need. We\u2019re taking that on, which makes sense because we push primary care a little bit more than some of the more legacy schools.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to be interesting to see if we can build the graduate medical education along with the schools, because the object is to retain those primary care docs in the communities that we\u2019re building them for. What we don\u2019t want to do is have them all leave those states for other residencies and not come back. It\u2019s going to be a paradoxical, very exciting thing to watch here at IllinoisCOM, because there are a lot of established medical schools in Chicago, but they aren\u2019t pushing a lot of primary care.<\/p>\n

Q: What are your impressions of IllinoisCOM?<\/h2>\n

A: I\u2019m really, really impressed. The facility is unbelievable. What they\u2019re doing in the anatomy lab is a much smarter, more sustainable way to teach anatomy. The tissue looks like it does in the operating room, not like a cadaver. Cadaveric teaching had its place, but this is a much better specimen to learn from.<\/p>\n

Every single faculty member I\u2019ve run into is genuinely excited. They\u2019re coming from a diverse background of talent. Each dean I met was another guru from some other slice of excellence. That\u2019s something I would say, knowing Dean Lucas for a long time, that he\u2019s got a knack for doing. He\u2019s always been a person you want to be around, and that tells you about inherent leadership. I\u2019m sure a lot of that is deliberate, but a lot of it is him being somebody people are drawn to. The students will pick up on that quickly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin O\u2019Connor, DO, is a graduate of New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, a 22-year U.S. Army veteran, and a former White House physician who served two presidents, two vice presidents, and their families. Dr. O\u2019Connor addressed the inaugural IllinoisCOM class during Welcome Week, sharing lessons drawn from his career. Centering his remarks on the advice that shaped his own path\u2014”Express the Interest”\u2014he encouraged the IllinoisCOM students to pursue opportunities rather than wait for them. Following his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":121069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1218],"class_list":["post-121067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-magazine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFormer White House Physician Addresses IllinoisCOM Students<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former White House physician Kevin O'Connor, DO, shares career insights and advice with IllinoisCOM's inaugural medical class.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/from-the-magazine\/kevin-oconnor-white-house-physician-illinoiscom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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