BOSTON (AP) - The first female president of the Massachusetts Medical Society has died at 89.
The Boston Globe reports that Dr. Barbara Rockett died last week. The Brookline resident was making house calls and serving on a number of boards into her 80s, but her health had declined in recent years.
Rockett served as president of the Massachusetts Medical Society in the 1980s and help lead a successful campaign to curb the rising cost of malpractice insurance in the state, according to the paper.
She was also president of the medical staff at the former Hahnemann Hospital in Worcester and worked at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.
The state medical society presented Rockett with its lifetime achievement award in 2006 and named its early career physician leadership award after her.
“I’ve tried to be a good wife, a good mother, a good physician, and as a result of it I’ve had to be very flexible in how I am able to control my life on a daily basis,” Rockett said in a 2012 interview, the Globe reports.
Rockett was born in Boston, graduated from Wellesley College and the Tufts University School of Medicine, and trained as a general surgeon at hospitals in Boston. Her funeral and burial were slated for Tuesday.
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