Heidy Sasvin’s path to becoming a family medicine doctor was not a traditional one. While typically medical students graduate from a four-year university before entering medical school, her college career began at Santiago Canyon College.
Yet the support and encouragement Sasvin received during her years at SCC motivated her to keep working toward her dream of becoming a doctor despite financial obstacles, she said.
Today, Sasvin, 36, is a family medicine doctor at Pavilion Family Medicine in Orange, a group practice that is affiliated with Providence-St. Joseph.
“I had always had a passion for medicine and the pursuit of knowledge,” Sasvin said. “Unfortunately, I did not have the financial means to attend a four-year university, and that’s what led me to community college.”
The SCC community supported her desire to become a doctor, including through scholarships. “My biology teachers encouraged me to continue pursuing my dreams even though we all knew that it was going to be a financial burden,” she said.
Born in Guatemala and immigrating to the U.S. at age 8, Sasvin grew up mostly in Santa Ana. She graduated from Foothill High School in 2006, and at one point as a teenager, she worked at Pavillion Family Medicine as a clerk.
Her passion for medicine grew from a series of positive experiences she and her mother, a single mom who worked as a housekeeper, had with local doctors. “They were so caring,” Sasvin said. “Even though we didn’t have means to afford excellent health care, they would still provide us with great quality of care,” she said. “Those interactions with the doctors and my mom and myself, they sparked that initial interest in medicine.”
Doctors who employed Sasvin’s mother also served as positive role models for the young woman.
Jennifer Olivares, recipient of a First
Generation scholarship (Photo courtesy of RSCCD Communications)
Aware of the intense competition to get into medical school, Sasvin, the first in her family to go to college, made sure to keep her grades high — and her efforts paid off.
Sasvin transferred from SCC to Cal State Fullerton and graduated with a bachelor of science degree. She was accepted into The Ohio State University College of Medicine.
In medical school, Sasvin experienced a turning point. “It was around my second and third year of medical school where I finally realized that family medicine was for me,” she said. “There was just something that I felt within me when I was with the family medicine residents. It felt like my people, and it seemed like in this specialty, I would be able to make the most difference in patients. I continued following in that direction and I’m very, very happy about that.”
After she graduated, Sasvin came back to Southern California to complete her residency at UC Irvine. She completed the Program in Medical Education for the Latino Communities Family Medicine Residency Training Track in 2022.
Family medicine, Sasvin said, is about building trusting relationships. “I can prescribe anything I want to patients, but if they don’t trust me, if there’s no patient-doctor relationship established, then we’re never going to get anywhere,” she said. “The patient’s not going to get better. And so I find that in family medicine, we really have that time to establish that rapport, to create and build that relationship so that we can continue actually making a difference in the patient’s health care.”
Though such relationships can take place with other specialties, “Seeing the patient over time over many years, that’s where that relationship and trust really gets established,” Sasvin said. “And so I find that my patients are an extension of my family, and that’s what family medicine is all about, building that trust and creating those relationships.”
Reflecting on her career so far, Sasvin said, “It’s been a very nontraditional path to becoming a physician, but it is my own path, especially with the financial burdens that I had. But it has been just an incredible journey, and I wouldn’t change it any other way.
Sasvin gives back to SCC through its First Generation Scholarship fund. “While I was at Santiago Canyon, I did receive a biology scholarship. I continue making donations so that other students can have that financial support, because even a small amount makes a huge difference in a student’s life.”