Carol M. Steiner, MD, FAAP
Staff Pediatrician, TPMG James River Pediatrics;
Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force Medical Corps (Ret.)
Born at just 30 weeks and 2½ pounds, she wasn’t breathing until an Army physician fought to resuscitate her. She spent the next three months in the hospital, once dropping down to 1 pound, 13 ounces as she struggled to survive.
Years later, when Dr. Steiner had decided to go to medical school and join the military herself, she wrote that physician a thank-you letter.
“I grew up with this thought stuck at the back of my mind that I wanted to be a pediatrician and that I wanted to serve my country,” she recalls.
Dr. Steiner, now a Staff Pediatrician at TPMG James River Pediatrics in Newport News, spent 13 years on active duty in the Air Force, including five years overseas. She also served seven years of reserve time before retiring in 2011 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
The military shaped her into the doctor she is today, Dr. Steiner says, particularly her two years stationed at Misawa Air Base in Japan. Fresh out of residency, she was assigned to head a clinic in a remote area surrounded by rice fields and prone to heavy winter snowfall.
The nearest full-service Japanese hospital was about an hour away. If she had a more complex case, Dr. Steiner often called specialists at Tripler Army Medical Center, a tertiary care hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“It gave me the courage to practice independently but always reach out for help as needed,” she says. “I left there a much more seasoned and confident pediatrician.”
Military life also taught Dr. Steiner the value of building strong camaraderie within a medical team, and of respecting patients’ cultural backgrounds and belief systems: “You learn a lot through exposure to different worlds.”
Born in Alabama, Dr. Steiner moved frequently as a child due to her father’s military and civilian jobs. She majored in Medical Technology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended Georgetown University School of Medicine on an Air Force scholarship.
On active duty in 1993, Dr. Steiner completed a Pediatrics Internship and Residency at David Grant Medical Center on Travis Air Force Base in California. Following her time in Japan, she spent three years as a Staff Pediatrician at Bitburg Annex in Germany.
In 2001, Dr. Steiner returned to the United States to work at Langley Air Force Base. She continued seeing patients but also stepped into more leadership positions, including four years as Medical Director of the base’s Bethel Clinic.
Honored with multiple service awards, Dr. Steiner closed out her military career as a reservist before transitioning into civilian medicine. After working as a pediatrician and neonatal hospitalist at several Hampton Roads practices and hospitals, she joined TPMG in 2019.
Dr. Steiner still loves her specialty, especially getting to be both silly and serious with her young patients. “I’m kind of a big kid myself most of the time,” she says. “Getting to watch them grow up is so special, and if you’ve been doing it long enough, sometimes you get to meet the kids of your former kid patients. That’s really fun.”
Outside of work, Dr. Steiner is married with two sons, one an adult working as a chiropractic provider and the other a high school junior. She enjoys cooking, hiking, biking, traveling, and spending time with her family and their Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Lucy.
Looking back, Dr. Steiner is grateful that her years in the military left her largely debt-free after medical school, provided top-quality training and allowed her to honor active-duty service members by caring for their families.
“The life experience you get,” she says, “is priceless.”
