After 25 years in auto repair, Carl Allamby, MD, just became an attending at Cleveland Clinic

When Carl Allamby, MD, was growing up in East Cleveland, he thought his dream of becoming a doctor was unrealistic.

His family didn’t have the money for the extensive education it would require, so after high school, Allamby focused on something he was good at — fixing cars.

At only 19 years old, he opened his own auto body shop, and dedicated his life to that work for some 25 years.

But around the 20-year mark, he realized he wanted a change. He thought pursuing a business degree would be the way to go, so he enrolled in a program at Ursuline College in Pepper Pike, Ohio.

He had to take a prerequisite class in biology and postponed it as long as he could. But the first day in that class, his old passion for medicine came rushing back to him.

“After my first hour in there, I felt that something in medicine was going to be the new me,” Allamby told MedPage Today in a phone interview.

Earlier this month, at age 51, Allamby started his first big job in medicine, as an attending physician in emergency medicine at Cleveland Clinic’s Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights.

Allamby’s story has received national attention for its lessons in hard work, perseverance, and never giving up on dreams.

Changing Course

Allamby said as a young child, he wanted to be a doctor, but he knew that the environment he grew up in would make that difficult.

East Cleveland, a suburb of Cleveland, was and still is a poor city, he said, and his family struggled financially. On top of that, he said, “The schools that we went to just weren’t made for putting out lawyers or other professionals.”

After graduating high school, he went straight to work. At 16, he’d taken a job at an auto parts store, where he learned he was good at fixing cars. On his own time after work, he would fix customers’ cars in the store’s parking lot.

By the time he was 19, he had enough customers, and with the help of a $500-limit Sears credit card, he started his own auto body shop.

“It grew really well, beyond what I had dreamed,” Allamby said of the business. It eventually grew to two locations, but the challenges of running a small business were many: long hours, managing employees, and putting all profits back into the business.

By 2006, he was ready for a change, so he enrolled at Ursuline College in pursuit of a business degree, running his shop during the day and going to school at night.

He put off that fateful biology class for a few years, but once he realized medicine would be his next big move, he started taking pre-med courses at Cuyahoga Community College, or Tri-C, in 2010.

When a professor there commented on his aptitude and work ethic, “at that point it made it real for me, that I could go after becoming a physician.”

His next step: enrolling in medical school. Northeast Ohio Medical University had a program where he took two more years of pre-med classes through Cleveland State University before starting medical school full-time in 2015.

But that meant he could no longer run the business. He’d given his employees a long heads-up about his plans, but none of them were interested in running the business. So he decided to take it to auction.

“I liquidated my whole life that I had worked at for 25 years — in about 10 hours,” he said.

It wasn’t a decision he’d arrived at hastily. He’d been discussing his plans with his wife, Kim, for years, writing down his goals, dividing them down into smaller steps, and writing contingency plans in case they didn’t happen.

“It’s going to be hard to achieve anything that’s grandiose without having a roadmap to get there,” Allamby said. “Nobody would drive from Cleveland to California without a map. … It all comes down to proper planning and preparation.”

In 2019, he started his residency in emergency medicine at Cleveland Clinic Akron, and he got his first job as an attending at Cleveland Clinic’s Hillcrest Hospital earlier this month.

It’s hard work, he noted, but extremely gratifying: “You leave the hospital, and you feel you’ve really helped. That you’ve put something better into society by helping those who are in need.”

In Need of Repair

Working in emergency medicine has many parallels to working in auto repair, he said.

Most of his auto customers would need something fixed quickly, and would be stressed about it. “A lot of what I do is calming down the patient first, letting them know that we’re going to address their problems. Because all of that plays into coming up with a diagnostic solution, or at least a pathway that leads you to the answer.”

He still feels customer service is a big part of what he does as a doctor. He likes to emphasize shared decision making, and considers it a key part of his approach in medicine. That means listening closely to the patient, and making them feel supported.

“I’m there to give them the best outcome that we both can agree upon,” he said. “You come up with a solution that may not be the one that you feel is 100% how you would do it, but one that the patient can agree with.”

His background has also given him particular insights into the systemic challenges within medicine. For instance, it took him “a lifetime of work … to afford to go to medical school,” he noted.

“That’s why it’s so hard for a person who grew up in an impoverished community,” he added. “I had to work 25 years, essentially, in order to afford my medical school.”

Even so, Allamby is still $300,000 in debt from all of the student loans he needed to take in order to finance his education.

“We need more scholarships for underrepresented individuals,” he said. There also needs to be “more of a pipeline” into medicine in underrepresented communities, “because we have a lot of bright minds who have a lot to give.”

Allamby is already mentoring several students who are in medical school or who are on their way there. He wants to start a program at his hospital where high school students can shadow doctors. And since earlier exposure is critical, he wants to start going to local elementary and middle schools to give talks to children about careers in medicine, “to just show up and let them know that you feel like they belong in that profession. It’s so important to have representation.”

Better representation ultimately means decreased healthcare costs, he noted. “The healthcare system needs to be representative of the area it serves, that’s how you get the best outcomes. … If people listen to my prescription for living a healthier lifestyle, that’s going to reduce the cost of their healthcare.”

“It behooves society to work towards greater equality in medicine in order to improve outcomes and eventually reduce costs,” he said. “That’s how I see it from my business perspective.”

When he’s not fixing things — cars, people, the system — Allamby spends time with his family, whose support has played an essential role in his journey through medicine.

His wife, Kim, is a physical therapist, his older son is a fireman and emergency medical technician, and his older daughter is a nursing assistant who is also in nursing school. He also has two younger daughters, and an 8-year-old granddaughter.

Kim ran their family while Allamby concentrated on medical school: “Her thoughtfulness and willing to sacrifice her time and energy toward my career and success … I just can’t say enough about her, and how much I appreciate her.”

That support allowed him to lean into chasing his dreams, which he advises others to do, no matter how out of reach they may seem.

“I knew that even if things didn’t work out [becoming a doctor], I would have been happy with whatever the end result would have been,” Allamby said. “Not all of us are going to be able to fulfill everything that we had in mind. But trying hard and working towards it is something you should always do. … As long as you give it your all, and do what you can with the hand you were dealt, you’ll never blame yourself for falling short of your dreams.”