Dr. John Mitchell, the 156th President of the Mississippi State Medical Association, is a Pontotoc family physician who has long served as Director of the Office of Mississippi Physician Workforce and also as an Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Your Journal Editor recently asked him a few questions for the benefit of our readers:
Dr. Lampton: Family is very important to you. You’ve been married to Elaine for 54 years and have reared two sons and have four grandchildren, whom you call “Grands”. Tell us of your family life as well as your day-to-day life in Pontotoc.
Dr. Mitchell: My day-to-day family life in Pontotoc has been scarce for 10 years. Weekends in Pontotoc have been more the norm during those 10 years. We lost our oldest son to a tragic car accident at the age of 19. Family was always important but with the loss of a child, family became even more important. Being a physician, we are faced with life and death situations way too often but when it occurs within your own family it emphasizes how important every moment you have with your family is. I treasure every opportunity and every moment I have with my family and especially now watching the “Grands” grow up, and they are growing up way too fast.
Dr. Lampton: Do you have any hobbies or avocations?
Dr. Mitchell: As early as I can remember, I loved to hunt and fish. I guess that was pretty much every country boy’s dream. Even in college, I would often state that I majored in hunting and fishing and minored in pharmacy. I loved to hunt and fish with my sons. Even my first Army assignment was chosen due to the availability of hunting and fishing, Fort Polk, Louisiana. After my son’s accident, I pretty much lost interest in hunting and fishing and haven’t participated in either in years. Maybe when the Grands get old enough, I’ll pick it up again. Elaine and I have always been sports enthusiasts. We loved football, basketball, and baseball. When we moved Pontotoc in 1989 we began to regularly go to Ole Miss sporting events. We held season tickets in all three of the major sports for years. We rarely missed a home game and even traveled to all away football games for many years with our friends. But over time our travel companions have either died or simply quit going to games, and we found that we enjoyed our friends more than the games so we gave up our football tickets and quit traveling to away games as well. We continue to go to basketball and baseball home games and still hold season tickets to both. It is difficult to make all the games living in Jackson but we make most weekend games. My only other hobby is working with wood. For the most part this is relaxation to me when I can bury myself in a project and close out the world’s noise. I love to build pretty much anything and plan to develop a complete wood-working shop when I retire.
Dr. Lampton: Your path to medicine was not a direct one. You practiced pharmacy before making a major life change and pursuing medicine. That was a brave jump from one career into another. Tell me about it and how your pharmacy background has impacted your medical journey?
Dr. Mitchell: Elaine and I were married during college, and she did her best to keep me focused but that was for sure, a difficult task. I knew at an early age that I wanted to go to college but had no idea what I wanted to study. Coming out of a small country school and having essentially no college graduates in my immediate family, there were no mentors to help guide me. I started my college career like so many undecided in the liberal arts. One day a high school friend and I were discussing our future and we both decided to apply to pharmacy school. During pharmacy school we both worked at Gathright-Reed Drug Company in Oxford. Even after graduating from pharmacy school we both continued to work there. An interesting side note related to Gathright-Reed was that Mr. Mac Reed was a close friend to William Faulkner. He loaned him books and sold his books in the drug store. There was a little side alley that allowed a quick entrance and exit that William Faulkner would come to the drug store to see Mr. Reed and slip in the side door. That alley later became known as Faulkner’s Alley. After a couple of years working at Gathright-Reed, I applied for and received a direct commission into the US Army as a pharmacist. It was during my military days that I began a concerted effort and a focused journey headed to a career in medicine. I enjoyed my time as a pharmacist but just couldn’t seem to find my niche in it. And I tried all phases of it. I learned many of my people skills during my work in pharmacy, and most importantly learned to appreciate the collaborative benefits of working with pharmacy and how it could add safety and value to my medical practice. After my tour in the Army we moved back to Oxford where I again worked as a pharmacist and went back to college. Looking back, I probably got the bug to consider medicine as a career in my senior year of pharmacy school. However, it still took me another eight years, a variety of pharmacy jobs, and a great deal of personal commitment before actually starting medical school.
Dr. Lampton: You have called Dr. J. Edward Hill one of your great mentors. Can you discuss his influence on you and also the role of other mentors, both in medicine and in life?
Dr. Mitchell: As I said, I think my senior pharmacy school clinical rotation began me thinking about the possibility of a medical career but it was not feasible at the time for multiple reasons. During my early pharmacy career in Oxford, there was a local physician who became an encourager and a physician mentor for me. Gerry Hopkins, MD, was a family physician in Oxford who like myself, had worked at Gathright-Reed as a pharmacist and served in the military before ultimately becoming a physician. Little did I know at the time that I too would follow that path. The first person I looked up after completing my military obligation was a former pharmacy professor, Henry Pace, PhD. Henry was influential in helping many former pharmacy students to correct past academic transgressions and go on to medical school. Henry is well known and honored in the osteopathic medical community, especially in Mississippi, as he mentored and encouraged many former pharmacy students into the field of osteopathic medicine. In our first meeting he said, “John, I always knew you were an underachiever but had so much more potential.” Henry was a great mentor of helped me right my academic ship. I am proud to have known Henry Pace and for the influence that he had in my life. Even though he would have preferred that I had chosen to go the osteopathic route, he never wavered in his support and encouragement of my chosen path. It was always my plan to come back to Oxford and work with Gerry Hopkins but like many of life’s journey’s it just didn’t work out for that to occur. Gerry and I remained friends throughout the years but instead of Oxford, I came back to Pontotoc and started a solo practice. In 1995, Dr. J. Edward Hill came calling. He had started the family medicine residency at North Mississippi Medical Center. Like so many of the residencies that my office has assisted in development, new residencies need faculty and Dr. Hill invited me to join him in that journey. I began by volunteering at the NMMC residency on my days off and that is when I initially got to know Dr. Ed Hill, the man, the mentor, the teacher, and the leader. I joined him full-time in the early 2000s and little did I know at the time that he was going to be running all over the world for the next few years with the AMA and the World Medical Association. I learned a lot from Ed about life, the Delta, medicine and even a little philosophy. I am much the better person and physician just for knowing him. He was and still is a true leader in medicine. I am grateful that our lives crossed, and I will always consider him a true friend and mentor.
Dr. Lampton: Before you landed at the Office of Physician Workforce, you had a solo family medicine practice and also many years blended with academic practice and private practice. How did that medical practice background help your important work in developing Mississippi’s physician workforce?
Dr. Mitchell: There is no substitute for experience. So, having practiced medicine as a solo physician and as an employed physician, these experiences give one the knowledge to discuss practice styles with young physicians and residents. My practice experiences go beyond those of employment status, such as walking the sidelines of small-town sporting events, working in large occupational medicine venues like Toyota and Ashley Furniture, working urgent care, emergency rooms, caring for nursing home patients, and even serving as a nursing home medical director. All these experiences allow me to share experiences with residents and young physicians. Having had the opportunity to be involved with a startup family medicine residency and all the challenges that we faced made me intimately aware of many of the challenges that the development of new GME programs would face. However, when one thinks they have pretty much seen everything, something unexpected will always pop up. But even these unexpected events produce less anxiety because of having faced similar challenging events. Preparation, planning, and coordination are keys to a successful startup. Sounds very similar to the three C’s of success and so it should. For sure the development of these many GME programs required collaboration and everyone working together to be successful.
Dr. Lampton: Your theme this year as President is “Together we can.” Can you describe the importance of the medical profession working “together”? You’ve discussed the “three Cs” critical for the success of our organization. Are those part of your theme of working as a team?
Dr. Mitchell: Be it a sporting event, a community project or a city, a state or a national project, practicing the three Cs for success: collaboration, coordination, and communication will definitely increase one’s chances for success. Everything of major importance requires a group effort. As I have often said, “It takes a village to get the job done.” It takes a village effort to accomplish greatness. But even the village can’t accomplish greatness unless the individual units of that village are willing to work as a team. There must be a cooperative and collaborative spirit in all their efforts. Even with everyone giving maximum effort without coordination of the parts we cannot be maximally efficient or effective. I said this in my speech and I’ll say it again, communication is critical. Communicating the why and how and in a timely fashion can mean the difference in great success or failure. We cannot ever minimize the impact of efficient and timely communication. It takes all three of these components working in synchrony to have maximal success. I feel that we can accomplish great things working in this model.
Dr. Lampton: What are other goals and challenges you would like to address as President? Do you anticipate any significant issues facing us in advocacy at the state Legislature next year? Are there national issues we as an organization need to address?
Dr. Mitchell: There is no doubt there will be scope of practice issues both in our state and at the national level. We will address them as they materialize. With the general election coming up in November, I look for there to be much more conversation about increased healthcare access, be it in the form of Medicaid expansion or by some other name. The part of that conversation that lingers over into the legislative session has many variables but the conversation will likely be there. Our rural hospitals are still facing many financial challenges ahead, and those conversations will likely continue for the foreseeable future. Strengthening our public health support and funding will always be on our agenda. On a state level an election year always adds uncertainty. There will be for sure be a new House Speaker, so committee chairs in the House may very well change and with that comes added uncertainty. There will be many first-time legislators and that too leads to uncertainty. If there was one thing I learned from going on multiple missionary trips to third world countries, it was to be nimble and be flexible. The best laid plans often had to be modified on a moment’s notice. We as leaders of your MSMA will be diligent in listening, learning, and preparing while also being nimble and flexible in our approach when needed. We ask our membership to do the same. We ask you all to keep us informed and stay prepared and ready for action when called upon. Remember we are stronger together. Medicine needs to have a strong and unified voice; MSMA can be that voice.
Dr. Lampton: You once authored an article entitled Mississippi Delta-Mission Possible. Is quality health care a “mission possible” for the rural areas of our state?
Dr. Mitchell: Yes, I believe quality healthcare is possible in all segments and for all people in our state. Do I feel that we are there yet? NO. I do think that we often confuse quality with quantity of health services. Quality and access are the keys to improved healthcare for all. No doubt there are multiple challenges to accomplish delivery of affordable quality healthcare. We live in the most advanced era of our lives so we must seek to be innovative in these challenges. The state is actively addressing the rural access to care through the Mississippi Rural Physician Scholarship Program and the Office of Mississippi Physician Workforce’s push to develop GME training sites in many of these rural areas. Physicians individually and collectively through MSMA can work with their local, state, and national leaders to improve many of these challenges facing the healthcare access and delivery. Yes, as I’ve frequently stated, I think all things are possible if we work together.
Dr. Lampton: Is there any advice you would give a young Mississippi physician who wants to become engaged and involved in organized medicine? How do you do it in a productive manner?
Dr. Mitchell: As with most of the challenges of life, healthcare challenges share many similarities. Addressing either of these set of challenges requires team work. So, I emphasize the theme that I have chosen for my year of presidency, we are stronger when we work together. There is definitely power in numbers. Our membership needs to grow. We definitely need our young physicians to be members; they are our future. But we need all physicians to be involved, old and young. Membership in organized medicine is a way to magnify one’s voice. Leaders of all organizations take note of membership volume when they are being approached, be it politicians or other entities. It is important that organizations like MSMA represent a large percentage of those available to be members. Granted, MSMA is doing to its best to represent all physicians, member or not, but the message is much more powerful when there are more voices behind the message. I know that each of us face different challenges that either limit or prevent us from being involved in organized medicine. I have heard most of the excuses and even used many of them myself along the way but I do want to emphasize the importance of getting involved at whatever level you are comfortable. It is easier today than any time in our history to be involved. There multiple sections that one can now become involved with that hopefully better aligns with where you are currently in your professional life. This affords each of us the opportunity to share and discuss similar challenges and opportunities and hopefully bring them forward to the full body for action. One can become as involved as one desires. Like you often hear, all politics start local. Organized medicine is no different, it starts local as well. Get involved with your component society, and if you don’t know where your component society meets, give me a call. There are so many ways to get involved, and I would be happy to discuss those avenues personally. If anyone is interested, just email me at president@msmaonline.com and I would be happy to explore ways that fit your interest.
Dr. Lampton: Is there anything else you would like our MSMA membership to know about their new President?
Dr. Mitchell: I have traveled much of the state related to my duties as Director of the Office of Mississippi Physician Workforce so I know many of the physicians in our state and probably even more know me through this channel. But as your President, I would love to hear from you, meet with you, and learn from you the challenges that are possibly unique to you or your discipline as well as to hear your views of what the family of medicine as a whole needs to address. I hope to visit most, if not all, component societies during my year of presidency. I remember when component society meetings yielded large groups with great networking and discussions. Lifetime friendships evolved from those meetings. We may not have always agreed in our discussions but we always remained friends. I would like to see our organization, MSMA, once again growing in both numbers and in activity. We all can find multiple things wrong with our profession, even life in general, but let’s do something about it instead of just complaining. Join our great organization, get involved, and I look forward to seeing you as I travel the state.