In 2003, soon after starting her family medicine residency training at St. Luke\u2019s Bethlehem Campus, Nguyet-Cam Vu (pronounced Wit Cam Voo) Lam, MD, set her heart on spending her career with St. Luke\u2019s, taking care of patients and training young physicians.<\/p>\n
At St. Luke\u2019s, Dr. Lam, who goes by the informal first name Cam, found the kind of organizational culture that matched her own values.<\/p>\n
\u201cSt. Luke\u2019s is so welcoming, and its mission of caring for and about people aligns directly with mine,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n
Today, as program director of the family medicine residency at St. Luke\u2019s Bethlehem since 2018, and family physician at Star Community Health, Dr. Lam is in her 23rd<\/sup>\u00a0year with the Network, which has been ranked by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the nation’s top health system for quality, safety and patient experience.<\/p>\n Earlier this year Dr. Lam was named the Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians 2026 Family Physician of the Year. The award recognizes an extraordinary doctor who demonstrates a commitment to the physician-patient relationship, provides comprehensive, compassionate patient care, demonstrates leadership in her specialty and maintains the highest ethical standards as a clinician and teacher.<\/p>\n \u201cYou epitomize what is best about Family Medicine and St. Luke\u2019s,\u201d her colleague Robert Langan, MD, program director of St. Luke\u2019s Sacred Heart Family Medicine Program, said to her recently. With her characteristic humility, Dr. Lam responded, \u201cIt\u2019s a team effort.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Lam\u2019s humanitarian values had developed from growing up in a family that immigrated to California from Vietnam when she was 16. They struggled to gain access to health services, especially for her brother who had to go to the emergency room without insurance for medical issues. \u201cWe were very poor and uninsured,\u201d she explains, adding they often experienced food insecurity and had to rely on a local church to be able to eat.<\/p>\n This inspired her to pursue medicine so she could take care of the underserved while training future generations of primary care physicians to join or succeed her. Since 2018, St. Luke\u2019s has hired an average 64% of graduating St. Luke\u2019s Bethlehem family medicine residents.<\/p>\n After earning a bachelor\u2019s degree from UCLA, Dr. Lam completed medical school at Kigezi International School of Medicine, Cambridge, England, and Uganda, Africa. She then matched at St. Luke\u2019s, allowing her to live near her future-husband\u2019s home in Philadelphia. The learning and clinical practice during residency were rigorous, and the support from faculty physicians and fellow residents was genuine and kind. Initially, Dr. Lam had thought she would return to California to be close to her family. But the calling to fulfill her dream of training the residents and caring for the community at St. Luke\u2019s was too strong for her to resist.\u00a0 2026 marks her 20th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary in academic medicine.<\/p>\n In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Dr. Lam provides routine, preventive, chronic, and acute care to patients. She also delivers babies, which brings her great satisfaction and gives her the opportunity to develop long-term trusting relationships with her patients, treating many from birth to death. She still takes care of a young man whom she delivered early in her residency, who is now a student at Lehigh University.<\/p>\n \u201cI often have three to four generations of families as patients, so I get to know them at all ages and life stages.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of them are Vietnamese immigrants who, like her own family, seek medical care with challenges in social determinants of health. She speaks their language and knows their customs and family dynamics and understands their health needs and challenges at various stages, all which helps her provide compassionate, effective care.<\/p>\n Dr. Lam, 53, hopes to retire some day from St. Luke\u2019s but is in no rush.\u00a0 She\u2019s passionate about training future doctors practicing full-spectrum family medicine, delivering babies and caring for patients, alongside her colleagues.<\/p>\n She and her husband, Steven Nguyen, live in Center Valley with their three grown daughters\u2014Grace, Christy and Abby–who all are studying pre-medicine with the hope of becoming doctors, says Dr. Lam.<\/p>\n She hopes one will choose family medicine as her specialty at St. Luke\u2019s, so Dr. Lam can pass on her knowledge to her and even work with her side-by-side one day.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m privileged to work here with wonderful people,\u201d she says. \u201cOur patients, colleagues and residents–we are all part of our extended family.\u201d<\/p>\n About St. Luke\u2019s<\/strong><\/p>\n Founded in 1872, St. Luke\u2019s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network with annual net revenue of more than $4.5 billion. With 23,000+ employees at 16 hospital campuses and 350+ outpatient sites, it is the Lehigh Valley\u2019s biggest employer.<\/p>\n The Network\u2019s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital is based at the Bethlehem Campus.<\/p>\n Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke\u2019s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley\u2019s first and only four-year medical school. It also operates the nation\u2019s oldest continuously operated School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 60+ fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with 550+ residents and fellows. Additionally, the St. Luke\u2019s College of Health Sciences opened in 2026.<\/p>\n In 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ranked St. Luke\u2019s #1 \u2013 ahead of Houston Methodist and Mayo Clinic, two of the nation\u2019s most prestigious institutions \u2013 as the nation\u2019s top health system for quality, safety and patient experience. This objective recognition, based on public data reported to the government, reaffirms St. Luke\u2019s preeminent position as THE BEST OF THE BEST among the most respected health care systems in the United States.<\/p>\n St. Luke\u2019s has been named a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World\u2019s Best Hospital. It is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare\u2019s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction. In 2026, the Network earned straight A\u2019s from Leapfrog across all of its acute care hospitals. It has earned 100 Top Hospital designations from Premier 12 years in a row, including in 2026 when the Network was identified as THE #1 MEDIUM-SIZE HEALTH SYSTEM IN THE COUNTRY. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN\u2019s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Information provided to TVL by: In 2003, soon after starting her family medicine residency training at St. Luke\u2019s Bethlehem Campus, Nguyet-Cam Vu (pronounced Wit Cam Voo) Lam, MD, set her heart on spending her career with St. Luke\u2019s, taking care of patients and training young physicians. At St. Luke\u2019s, Dr. Lam, who goes by the informal first name Cam, found … Continue reading From Vietnam to Bethlehem–St. Luke\u2019s Family Medicine Doctor Dedicates Career to Caring for the Underserved and Training Physicians<\/span>
\nSam Kennedy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"