Contemplating where to practice medicine at the end of that medical training, the former resident of Falmouth in Stafford County might have followed scores of classmates to patient-rich places like Northern Virginia, Richmond or Tidewater.

Instead, she chose the more lightly populated Northern Neck, partly because it's one of the many regions of the state underserved by doctors. That suited her interests and a requirement in the training program she'd been through.

Today, the 30-year-old doctor has a growing pediatrics practice in Warsaw and an office that's as kid-friendly as they come, with a castle, choo-choo trains and tigers on the walls.

Dr. Bradshaw has been received there warmly, especially by parents surprised but gratified to get calls checking up on their children.

I visited Dr. Bradshaw at her office last week, drawn by two very different reasons.

One was the Mary Washington College Young Alumnus Merit Award she recently received from the College Alumni Association.

Presenting that award, Alumni Awards Chairman Monecia Naggs said that Bradshaw "is known not only for her kind and gentle bedside manner with the children who visit her office, but she has the unheard-of reputation for calling concerned mothers late in the evening just to check on a little one who visited her earlier in the day with strep throat or an ear infection."

The second reason I wanted to visit with this pediatrician in Warsaw is my own history there.

As I was growing up in that town thirty-some years ago, there wasn't a pediatrician to be found.

Instead, when I needed allergy shots or something for wheezing in hay-fever season, I hopped in the car and was driven about half an hour to see a doctor with evening office hours in Westmoreland County.

Now, children in Warsaw and other counties have several doctors to pick from, including Bradshaw and other pediatricians in the region.