Are you really my doctor?

When Navy Veteran Dr. Matthew Messa walks into the room, Veterans are often surprised to learn that he is their doctor.

“I don’t hide who I am,” said Messa, an emergency physician at the Wilkes-Barre VA Medical Center. “You know, I walk in and they see who I am. They’re like, ‘You’re not the doctor.’ Like, but no, I really am,” Messa joked, as he rolled up his sleeves to show his Eagle Globe and Anchor tattoos.

Messa had not planned to work in an emergency room. In fact, after one semester in college, he knew he wasn’t ready to be a college student. So, he followed a couple of friends into the Navy, where he entered hospital corpsman training.

When his training was over, Messa was surprised to receive orders sending him to Camp Lejeune. There, he got additional medical field training and found himself attached to the Marine Corps for the remainder of his service.

“I got baptized by fire. I was sent pretty much directly to the Persian Gulf to start with a Marine Corps engineer unit. We were in the initial breach going in on the ground war up to Kuwait City. And you know, we did what we did and did it well and got to come home. It was pretty, pretty eventful,” he shared.

Returning Home

When Messa returned home, he separated from the Navy to pursue his goal of becoming a physician assistant. After practicing for four years, he learned about the Hazlewood Act, which provides qualified Veterans, spouses and dependent children with an education benefit of up to 150 hours of tuition exemption at public institutions of higher education in Texas.

“And so I thought, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna keep going to school until somebody tells me I can’t,’” he said.

At 30, he started medical school and, seven years later, began his career in emergency medicine, serving as a residency director at Geisinger Medical Center in Pennsylvania, and holding academic appointments at Texas A&M, Baylor and Temple University Colleges of Medicine.

Reflection

However, when the pandemic hit, Messa thought it was time to hang it up. “I’m too young to retire, but I’m too old to keep doing this stuff,” he thought.

That’s when he began to reflect on his own experience as a Veteran.

“I had realized that I had a lot of unaddressed traumas of my own from my service. But my era, my generation, was in between Vietnam and Afghanistan. So, we kind of fell through the cracks, in that nobody really talked about what we should do.”

Messa reached out to the director of the PTSD Clinic at the Coatesville VA Medical Center.

“I told her, ‘Listen, I’m a doc. I don’t want to see anybody in my area. I want to see what you have to offer, but I can’t see somebody in the area.’”

So, the director took him on as a patient herself.

Making a Difference at VA

“I was a patient of hers for many years. That entire experience right there changed my whole life, because if I hadn’t gone, I certainly would have quit medicine,” Messa said.

It also got him thinking about working at VA as a physician.

Messa began his career at VA as a part-time physician at the Hampton VA. Today, he is back home in Pennsylvania, proudly serving Veterans at Wilkes-Barre VA.

There, he sees the difference that VA care makes for his patients.

“Most of the time when I have to transfer somebody, people are not happy about it. They would rather stay here. They don’t like going to the community because then they’re just kind of like a number like everybody else, and they don’t have that camaraderie. [At VA], they have camaraderie with the people that work here, because a significant number of people here are Veterans.”

Messa wants every Veteran to benefit from the fellowship and clinical expertise that VA provides. He tells Veterans who may be skeptical: “I have worked in community hospitals. I’ve worked in academic centers. I’ve worked in rural critical access hospitals, and I’ve worked in more than one VA, and I can assure you that this is where I get my own care. This is where I choose to come, because I know we provide good care.”

Learn more about eligibility for VA health care and how to enroll.