Family Physician of the Year inspires colleagues

Annie Flanzraich

Friday, June 10, 2005 | 5:09 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

June 11 - 12, 2005

Dr. Thomas Hunt is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to medicine. Need to deliver a baby? He can do that. Minor surgery? Check.

Hunt, 40, has seen a lot -- he has been a country doctor and a physician in a Strip hotel. Now chairman of the University of Nevada Medical School's Department of Family and Community Medicine in Las Vegas, Hunt carries a full workload teaching young doctors and treating patients.

In May, Hunt was selected from 20 other family physicians statewide as the Nevada Family Physician of the Year by the Nevada Academy of Family Physicians.

Dr. James G. Lenhart, vice dean of the medical school, said Hunt deserves the award for his commitment to the field.

"He just a great guy," Lenhart said. "He's a tireless worker and a great physician and physician educator alike."

For Hunt the only way to teach his students and the residents he oversees is through example.

"Part of my role is to be a role model, and in order to be a role model I need to see patients," Hunt said.

Putting patients first is a lesson Dr. Aron Rogers, one of Hunt's former residents and now a member of the medical school faculty,learned under Hunt's tutelage. Rogers said Hunt is one of the first people in the office in the morning and the last one to leave the office and the time between is devoted to patients.

Rogers said what impresses him most about Hunt is not individual extraordinary cases Hunt has handled but the daily work he puts in.

"To me it's more the marathon of being a physician," Roger said. "And that he spends so much time with his patients over the long haul."

Hunt also finds time to support Tar Wars, a smoking education program the Nevada Academy of Family Physicians coordinates, by going to schools and talking about smoking and its dangers.

"He's done numerous presentations for me," said Barbara Bolling, the state coordinator of the program. "It takes a big chunk of time to go out and do that, and he's been tremendous. He's a true Tar Wars advocate."

Hunt became a doctor because he said he always wanted to help people. He held licenses in California and New York before coming to Nevada in 1998.

In New York he worked in a school district as a school physician and he also taught young doctors through the State University of New York.

He had a family practice in the small New York town of Morovia, southwest of Syracuse, before coming to Nevada to be closer to his wife's family.

Practicing in Las Vegas was a huge change for Hunt when he moved here from his small practice.

"I made about 180-degree turn," he said. "When I was there I was a rural physician and the only doctor in the community. My oldest patient was 102 and my youngest one would be the one I delivered the day before. When I came out here, the first job I had was working (as a doctor) on the Strip in a hotel."

He was a staff physician at the Imperial Palace and handled a variety of patients, mostly tourists who had health issues on vacation.

After a year of tourist medicine Hunt returned to family medicine, a practice he said affords him versatility. He also added duties at the medical school because he wanted to continue teaching.

"I like to explain it as put me in plane and throw me out with parachute, and wherever I land, whether it's a big city, small community or a Third World country, I will be to do many things to help the people around me," Hunt said.