the Hospital of Today - Olympic Medical Center

Thanking Our
Hospital Heroes
Thanks in large part to the efforts of orthopaedic surgeons Jim Mowry, MD, and Bob Watkins, MD,
patients can rely on Olympic Medical Center to meet their orthopaedic trauma care needs 24x7.
The Washington Rural Health
Association recently recognized Dr.
Jim Mowry and Dr. Bob Watkins
– who both came out of retirement to
provide residents of the North Olympic
Peninsula with orthopaedic trauma care
– as winners of the 2010 Rural Health
Practitioner Award.
With the Community
in Mind…
In order to be recognized as a Level
III trauma center, Olympic Medical must
meet a number of criteria – one of which
requires providing 24-hour orthopaedic
coverage in the emergency room (ER).
Essentially, without Drs. Mowry and
Watkins, Olympic Medical would not be
able to maintain its status as a Level III
trauma center.
“Being a Level III trauma center ensures
we’re able to deliver the kind of emergency
care patients need here at home, rather
than having to send them to other facilities,”
says Scott Kennedy, MD, chief medical
officer at Olympic Medical. “To help us
maintain this important status, Drs. Mowry
and Watkins have provided coverage since
June 2004. The experience they bring
to Olympic Medical allows them to see
a broad variety of patients who would
otherwise have to be transported out
of our community for care.”
Both physicians had retired from
medicine and were enjoying other
activities, travel and time spent with
family and friends. So what motivated
them to return to active roles in
practicing medicine? Read on for
some insight.
Bob Watkins, MD:
Gaining a Different Health
Care Perspective
After retiring from orthopaedic
surgery in 2000, Dr. Watkins began
taking courses at Peninsula College
in Port Angeles to pursue an interest
in information technologies (IT). He
applied and was accepted into an
unpaid internship program in the
IT department at Olympic Medical.
While it may seem that going from
orthopaedic surgery into IT services
is a drastic change, providing these
services in a hospital setting allowed
Dr. Watkins to serve as a liaison
between medical and IT staff members.
“In the process of performing my
duties, which at that time included setting
up software and wireless connections
in the ER, I saw patients with all sorts of
injuries – things we could handle here –
come in and be sent to a regional trauma
center that manages life-threatening
injuries,” says Dr. Watkins. “To get these
patients the care they needed without
leaving their community, I volunteered to
join the medical staff.”
Having been retired from orthopaedics
nearly two and a half years, Dr. Watkins
was supported by local orthopaedic
surgeons in order to pursue a
re-credentialing for certification necessary
to reenter the field. Once this process was
complete, he took ER on-call duties every
other week until Dr. Mowry joined the
medical staff almost a year later.
Dr. Bob Watkins, orthopaedic surgeon,
accepts the Rural Health Practitioner Award from
Washington State Department of Health Secretary
Mary Selecky in March 2010.
6 www.olympicmedical.org