Valerija Birute Raulinaitis (March 5, 1915 – February 26, 2004) was a Lithuanian-American physician. In 1971, she became the first woman appointed to head a Veterans Administration (VA) hospital.

Early life and education

Valerija Birute Berzinskas was born in

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

and raised in Lithuania, the daughter of Victor Berzinskas and Maria Narkeviciute. She earned her medical degree at Vytautas Magnus University in

Kaunas Kaunas (; ; also see other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the largest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Trakai ...

. In the United States, she pursued further training in psychiatry at the Downey Veterans Administration Hospital in Chicago.

Career

Raulinaitis practiced medicine in Lithuania from 1938 to 1944, until she fled Lithuania with her husband and daughter. She worked as a doctor in a displaced persons camp in Germany from 1944 to 1949, then moved to the United States. In the United States, Raulinaitis was a laboratory technician and pediatrician at Harper Hospital in Detroit, and as a psychiatrist at Woodward State Hospital in Iowa. She became a psychiatrist at the Downey VA Hospital in 1957, and in 1960 became head of the women's neuropsychiatric program at Downey. She became chief of staff at Downey in 1962, the first woman to hold that role at an American VA hospital. In 1971, Raulinaitis was appointed director of the Pittsburgh (Leech Farm Road) VA hospital, becoming the first woman to head a VA hospital. In 1973, she became director of the American Lake Veterans Hospital in Tacoma, Washington.

Honors

Raulinaitis was one of the six recipients of the Federal Woman's Award in 1970, and attended a reception with the other recipients in the

Oval Office The Oval Office is the formal working space of the President of the United States. Part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, it is located in the West Wing of the White House, in Washington, D.C. The oval-shaped room ...

in 1971. Also in 1970, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Publications

* "Therapeutic Democracy: Group Process as a Corrective Emotional Experience" (1965, with Keith K. Hoover and Fred E. Spaner)

Personal life

Valerija Berzinskas married American-born economist Viktoras Raulinaitis. They had a daughter, Ruta, born in 1943. The retired to California together. Her husband died in 1986, and she died in 2004, at the age of 88.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Raulinaitis, Valerija 1915 births 2004 deaths Physicians from Riga 20th-century American women physicians 20th-century American physicians American psychiatrists Lithuanian emigrants to the United States Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic people Soviet emigrants to the United States Lithuanian women physicians American women psychiatrists 20th-century Lithuanian physicians