How these Miami fathers share a bond with their kids. It happens in the doctor’s office

Father’s Day is typically a time when dads and their kids get together to bond over brunch or barbecue. But for several South Florida doctors, family ties spill over to the office.

That means working together, healing patients, even bringing new babies into the world.

Dads can show a child many firsts — maybe yours showed you how to hammer a nail without bashing your thumb. These fathers, whom you will meet below, also have introduced their kids to the world of medicine.

Their children roamed the hospital halls observing Doctor Dad at work. Today, the kids have grown into doctors themselves, working alongside their fathers in places they have known from the beginning.

The Tudela family

Family ties are on the desk in a top-floor office at HCA Florida Kendall Hospital, formerly known as Kendall Regional. Francisco Tudela, 72, an OB/GYN at the hospital, sat with his daughter, Olga Tudela, 42, also an OB/GYN. They were surrounded by pictures of their family legacy in medicine.

One photo shows a younger Francisco performing surgery alongside his father, who bears the same name and was also an OB/GYN. Other pictures show his father shaking hands with President Ronald Reagan and his Vice President George H.W. Bush.

Francisco Tudela’s father worked at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba after getting his medical degree in Chicago. In the 1960s, shortly after Fidel Castro took power, he left for the U.S. where he worked for the rest of his career.

Now, his granddaughter, Olga Tudela, works in the same halls where her grandfather mentored her father, sometimes seeing the same patients they helped.

“When I see them, the older ones, they’ll tell me, ‘Oh my God, your grandfather delivered my baby,’” Olga said. “I’ve worked with people who knew my grandfather, who tell me an aspect of him that I really never knew.”

The Asbun family

At Baptist Health’s Miami Cancer Institute, father and son work together as surgeons specializing in hepatobiliary, or liver and gallbladder operations. Their family has seen generations of doctors.

Horacio Asbun, chief of hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery at the Cancer Institute, said he calls his son “Dr. Asbun 3.0” because he’s the third surgeon in a row in the family.

Juan Asbun, or “Dr. Asbun 1.0,” practiced surgery in Bolivia, where he was a role model for his son. He was a general surgeon when surgeons at that time didn’t specialize. He took up hepatobiliary, which the next two generations took up as specializations.

“A lot of the things that I have learned from him, I have actually practiced and have been a source of success for me, and I don’t mean only on the surgical, technical part, but also on the passion to treat the patient as a human being and enjoy the relationship and the bond between the surgeon and the patient,” Horacio Asbun said.

When Horacio’s turn came to train his own son, he said he wondered how he would perform as a doctor. But Dad found that his son had an innate sense of how to be a doctor.

Domenech Asbun, a hepatobiliary surgeon at the Cancer Institute, joked that his father and grandfather must have trained him as an infant.

The Kalman family

Leonard and Noah Kalman, father and son, also work at Baptist Heath’s Cancer Institute in Kendall.

Leonard Kalman, the executive deputy medical director and chief medical officer at the Cancer Institute, and Noah Kalman is a radiation oncologist.

Leonard, 72, said he was drawn to the profession because he saw that people with cancer need help, and he wanted to be there for them. His son originally wanted to go into engineering, but like his father, found himself drawn to the idea of helping people through medicine.

“I never pressured him to be a doctor. In fact, I told him, you know, be an investment banker,” Doctor Dad said. “He didn’t take that advice. He decided to be a doctor instead. But it gives me a tremendous amount of pride to see that he’s here working hard.”

In addition to helping patients, Noah considers his work a homecoming because he gets to see so many people he’s known for years.

The Barkin family

The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine is home to a father-son duo, with Jamie Barkin, a professor of Medicine at the university, and Jodie Barkin, an associate professor at the same school.

“We work together a lot there and it’s really somebody who’s a 24/7 mentor,” Jodie said. “You have the dad mentorship role. You have the senior colleague mentorship role. ...I kind of have the all-access pass.”

Jodie credited his father with being a pioneer in the field of pancreatic disease and pancreatitis. Now, Jamie is the director of UHealth’s Pancreas Center while his son is the associate director. They work together on research projects and patient care.

Jamie Barkin said it feels much easier to mentor his son, not just because they work in the same field, but because of the connection they share.

“The fortunate part about having your son or daughter in the same field as you are is you can understand their problems that they face,” he said. “It’s a special kind of bond when you get out of your car and you see your son, get out of his, and you walk over and give each other a hug and then start the day.”

Father’s Day

Outside of the hospital, the doctors like to bond over other things besides medicine.

The Tudelas said they enjoy boating as a family.

The Asbuns said they like to go skiing and biking together.

The Kalmans and the Barkins share their enthusiasm for sports.

One thing they all share: They plan on spending Father’s Day with family, where the dads and kids can bond even more.

An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of Dr. Jamie Barkin.

This story was originally published June 17, 2022 at 12:17 PM.