A Passion for Serving Patients
Dr. Pepi Granat has maintained a generalist approach to provide healing and comfort
By Debby Teich
Photography by Jeffery Salter
Dr. Pepi Granat has “never been afraid to fight for the things that were important to me.”
F
or more than six decades, Pepi Granat, B.S. ’58, M.D. ’62, has dedicated her career to compassionate care and advocacy.
Dr. Granat grew up in Miami Beach in the 1950s, when women were encouraged to cook and sew rather than pursue a professional career. She attended the University of Miami on a band scholarship, with plans to become an English teacher. After excelling in a required science class, she decided to change course and become a physician.
“I wanted to help people by bringing healing and comfort to those who needed it,” Dr. Granat said.
She was one of few women in her medical school class and says her Miller School training set her up for a successful career.
“We received a thorough education and excellent clinical training at Jackson Memorial Hospital,” she said.
After working for other physicians across the country, Dr. Granat returned to South Florida to open a family practice in 1971. She believes that the generalist approach to patient care, with liberal use of specialist expertise when indicated, is the best way to take good care of patients.
“All of us want a doctor who will take care of our whole person, who will be available when we are sick, who will take care of us when we must be hospitalized, who will visit us in the nursing home when we are old and who will take care of our family members,” she said.
She takes pride in spending the necessary time to thoroughly examine each patient, but she worries that it has become difficult for today’s doctors to sustain an independent generalist practice like hers.
“I certainly hope the independent practice of medicine will never go away,” she said. “Generalism in medicine is especially valuable now, with burgeoning and confusing information abounding on the Internet.”
To help promote medicine’s future, she has been a regular donor to the John K. Robinson Medical Scholarship.
Dr. Granat voiced some of her concerns in The Real Drama: Incredible Medicine, a book she published in 2021 that includes anecdotes from her career and discusses changes in the practice of independent medicine through the years.
The book also chronicles her extensive activism, including how she helped get cigarette commercials temporarily removed from Miami billboards and advocated for physicians’ rights to practice without malpractice insurance.
“I have never been afraid to fight for the things that were important to me,” she said.
When Dr. Granat is not seeing patients, she sings in several choirs, plans high school reunions and participates in medical missions to remote areas of Peru and Honduras. She also spends time with her family, including her seven grandchildren.
At 87, she has no plans to retire. “I love my patients, and I am good at what I do,” Dr. Granat said. “I hope my story inspires people who hesitate to go into medicine. It is a wonderful feeling to help people.”
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