{"id":381,"date":"2016-03-07T18:25:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T18:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mountainhope.wpengine.com\/?p=381"},"modified":"2019-09-24T15:07:33","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T15:07:33","slug":"meet-dr-george-kirkpatrick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/meet-dr-george-kirkpatrick\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Dr. George Kirkpatrick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mountainhope.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Dr.-K.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-382\" src=\"https:\/\/mountainhope.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Dr.-K-510x572.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. K\" width=\"172\" height=\"193\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mountainhope.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Dr.-K-510x572.jpg 510w, https:\/\/mountainhope.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Dr.-K-267x300.jpg 267w, https:\/\/mountainhope.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Dr.-K-400x450.jpg 400w, https:\/\/mountainhope.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Dr.-K.jpg 1909w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 172px) 100vw, 172px\" \/><\/a>Dr. George Kirkpatrick sees Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic as a good deal for&nbsp;patients \u2013 and for him, too.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast to his years of hectic emergency room work, the Clinic\u2019s newest doctor loves&nbsp;having the luxury of time to talk to patients and to hear about all their ailments. That&nbsp;extra time benefits patients, too, he says. Unlike in an ER, at the Clinic \u201cPatients see&nbsp;doctors and nurse practitioners who have time to see what\u2019s bothering them,\u201d Dr.&nbsp;Kirkpatrick said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom the patients\u2019 perspective, this place rocks,\u201d he said. It\u2019s cheaper than most&nbsp;doctor\u2019s offices; Clinic referrals to specialists are often less expensive; common&nbsp;medications cost less at the pharmacy, and patients are given time to explain their&nbsp;health problems.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Kirkpatrick was trained in comprehensive care and appreciates having time to spend&nbsp;with patients. \u201cIt\u2019s so good for me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He grew up in Western Pennsylvania. After high school he attended the Air Force&nbsp;Academy, but after two years decided that life was not for him and switched to the&nbsp;prestigious Johns Hopkins University. He sold knives from door to door to pay for it, he&nbsp;said. He then studied at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia (now part of&nbsp;Drexel University).<\/p>\n<p>While he was completing his residency in Muncie, Ind. he earned his master\u2019s degree in&nbsp;teaching. Later he moved to Chattanooga and practiced medicine in Athens, Tenn. for&nbsp;15 years. In total, he has practiced medicine for more than 40 years.<\/p>\n<p>He used his teaching qualifications by becoming an associate professor of family&nbsp;medicine in Chattanooga while working in Athens. Later he moved to Mobile, Ala. where&nbsp;he taught at the University of Southern Alabama. In Mobile, he switched to emergency&nbsp;room work, and it was there he met Gail Steele, who&#8211; years later&#8211; would later tell him about Mountain Hope Clinic, where she began to work one day weekly after her retirement.<\/p>\n<p>He and his wife, Wanda, have moved to the Richardson\u2019s Cove area. They have long&nbsp;wanted to live in this area, he said.&nbsp; For the past three months, he has worked on&nbsp;Mondays and Fridays at the Clinic and continues his emergency room work in Mobile&nbsp;two days a week, twice a month.<\/p>\n<p>The couple has eight adult children from previous marriages and six grandchildren&nbsp;between them. Dr. Kirkpatrick\u2019s hobbies include saltwater fish, gardening and flowers.<\/p>\n<p>His decision to practice at the Clinic and live in Sevier County has been \u201cThe best move&nbsp;I made in a long time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. George Kirkpatrick sees Mountain Hope Good Shepherd Clinic as a good deal for&nbsp;patients \u2013 and for him, too. In contrast to his years of hectic emergency room work, the Clinic\u2019s newest doctor loves&nbsp;having the luxury of time to talk to patients and to hear about all their ailments. That&nbsp;extra time benefits patients, too, he [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountainhope.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}