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- [S106] The Mountain Press, 21 Jun 2006.
Woman returns home to serve as doctor
SEVIERVILLE - Robin Huskey is coming back home to live out a childhood dream.
When the 29-year-old completes her residency at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, she will be joining Dr. Eric Littleton at Great Smokeys Family Medicine. She is set to join the staff there Aug. 1.
Dr. Huskey grew up in Pigeon Forge; she's a graduate of Sevier County High School and the daughter of Rick and Barbara Huskey. Her brother, Ryan Huskey, still lives in Sevier County.
Once she decided to be a doctor, she said, it was her goal to come back home to practice.
"It's always what I wanted to do, deep down in my heart, to come back and take care of the community that raised me," she said.
She didn't dream she'd be the first woman to have a family practice in Sevier County, but it appears that is the case. She'll be working for Covenant Health, and her new employer has told her she'll probably be the first.
"I was definitely surprised," she said. "It's an honor."
Huskey said she decided to go into family practice because it gave her a chance to work with people from a variety of backgrounds. Working in a clinic at UT as part of her residency, she might go from giving a 9-year-old a checkup to working with a 61-year-old post-polio patient. She hopes to continue working with people from lots of backgrounds and looks forward to being the physician for entire families.
Littleton is happy to have another physician join him; he's been alone in the practice since it opened almost six years ago. He's happy that it was Huskey, whom he noted is chief resident of the family medicine department at UT.
"She's not just your average resident," he said.
One of her old supervisors agreed.
"Dr. Huskey is an excellent clinician," said Dr. Gregory Blake, chairman of family medicine at the University of Tennessee graduate school of medicine. "Her patients love her. But far beyond that, she embodies everything we stand for in the medical profession.
"Dr. Huskey has been on mission trips to help people in Indonesia after the tsunami and to Thailand to show her love of people and her passion for helping those in need," he said. "I was so impressed by Dr. Huskey I offered her a position on our faculty, but she really wanted to return to her hometown and help the people who mean so much to her.
"The people of Sevier County are very fortunate to have Dr. Huskey coming to practice there."
Great Smokeys Family Practice is in the Burchfiel Medical Complex on Middle Creek. It can be reached by calling 908-7137.
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