Haggar hanging up the stethoscope
Published 5:00 am Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Tom Haggar’s long history as a doctor at Virginia Mason Winslow Clinic also traces the development of health care on the island.
Haggar, who retired from his practice two weeks ago, has worked at the clinic since 1971, when he was hired as a young family practice doctor by Tom Bourns and Sinclair Wilt, the two physicians who founded the clinic on the current site in the mid-1940s.
“It was a very different island,” Haggar said. “There were about 9,000 islanders, and things were more casual. People who stayed here year round, many of them had been here for generations. New people were just starting to move in.”
The practice of medicine here was also different. Either Bourns or Wilt was on call continuously, Haggar says, “24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.” The only emergency services were volunteers with the fire department – and the clinic doctors. The closest emergency room, at Harrison Hospital in Bremerton, wasn’t staffed.
If an islander called one of the trio at 3 a.m. that doctor would meet them at the clinic.
“We would personally take an x-ray, personally draw blood,” Haggar said. “We would do what we needed to do to figure out what was wrong.”
While gradually, over the years, the Harrison emergency room became staffed, the Bremerton site was still too far away to be of much use.
Even victims of true emergencies – including car wrecks and heart attacks – were brought to the doctors’ office instead of the hospital.
The doctors might make the necessary repairs, or if the situation were truly urgent, have a Fort Lewis helicopter airlift patients to Harborview from the high school football field.
Sometimes the doctor would even accompany the victim in an ambulance.
“We had quite a bit of those first-hand experiences in the field,” Haggar said. “Some of them were tragic, but some of them were quite rewarding, because we were able to save lives.
“Needless to say, it was always exciting. You never knew when you’d be called, 24 hours a day. For a young doctor, it was stimulating and exciting.”
The doctors obtained “a defibrillator or two” and trained fire department personnel to use them.
More than a few lives were saved over the phone by instructing the EMTs what to do.
“Technically I don’t know if it was legal, but we’d bend the rules,” Haggar said. “My philosophy was: if a person was dead they couldn’t hurt them much more by giving them an unnecessary shock.”
Thirty years of practice has generated a wealth of anecdotes.
In one memorable incident, a blind Winslow resident who often came into the clinic to use the restroom was locked in one night. When staff unlocked the clinic the next morning, they were startled to find the man sound asleep in what was then the labor and delivery room.
“He said he knew we’d be back in the morning, so he just lay down and spent the night,” Haggar recalls.
Medical practice could be integrated with island life in unexpected ways. Shortly after Haggar moved to the island, then-high school football coach Gordon Prentice decided that a doctor should attend every football game for the safety of the players.
He approached Haggar, a high school and college sportsman and fan. For the next 30 years, Haggar attended every game, quietly donating his time without fanfare or recompense.
“That’s a lot of games,” Haggar said, “but I got in free and got a front row seat so it wasn’t so bad. I considered it a perk.”
But even if Haggar won’t blow his own horn, friends like Dr. Piero Sandri, a fellow physician who has known Haggar for 18 years won’t let him retire without noting his contributions.
Sandri uses terms like “scrupulously honest” and has “highest integrity” to describe his longtime colleague.
“He’s been great, a trusted colleague, an excellent clinician,” Sandri said. “The kind of friend you’d go to war with.”
During the mid to late 1980s, as Haggar’s daughter Jessica moved through Bainbridge schools and his wife Priscilla Zimmerman’s architecture practice thrived, the island also grew.
From three doctors, the staff expanded to a dozen.
“Obviously the feeling of the clinic going from two doctors to a dozen doctors, from a small staff to a large staff is of course different,” he said. “So as that changed, as you had more receptionists that couldn’t possibly know the names of every patient there is something lost, a feeling lost.”
Now, with the new Harrison facility in Silverdale, islanders may obtain care as quickly as they could if a Bainbridge doctor were to meet them in Winslow, haggar points out.
And, he adds, many of the diagnostic tests such a patient would need today can’t be done in the small clinic setting – although tests like digital X-ray and mammography are offered in Winslow since the clinic joined forces with Virginia Mason a decade ago, a move that also “placed consultants at our fingertips.”
“All in all, it’s safer to use those fully staffed services than it is to come down in the middle of the night with one person trying take care of you,” he said.
While Haggar admits that people who recall the old days might miss the personal touch, he believes people receive better service, overall.
“Even though it’s less personal from the patients’ point of view and, quite frankly, less satisfying on a personal level for the physician, the ultimate care is better. We’ll see the patients as often, but there will be someone else involved, too – a diabetes nurse, a dietician, a pharmacist.”
While Haggar believes that the nature of medicine at Virginia Mason Winslow will continue to evolve – reflecting changes nationwide.
But some things won’t change, he believes.
“You look at what Bourns and Wilt did, what their attitude was,” he said. “It was just: Take care of people. If someone needs to be seen, see them. Wilts saw a lot of people quickly. Bourns might spend and hour and a half with a patient. At the end of the month, they split the profits 50-50. There was never any thought of ‘I’m working harder than you are.’ and I think that attitude carried through. Even though our group is 14 doctors, the attitude is, you do your job and you see your patients and you pull your weight.
“But there’s not anybody there who’s in it for themselves.”
years won’t let him retire without noting his contributions.
Sandri uses terms like “scrupulously honest” and has “highest integrity” to describe his longtime colleague.
“He’s been great, a trusted colleague, an excellent clinician,” Sandri said. “The kind of friend you’d go to war with.”
During the mid to late 1980s, as Haggar’s daughter Jessica moved through Bainbridge schools and his wife Priscilla Zimmerman’s architecture practice thrived, the island also grew.
From three doctors, the staff expanded to a dozen.
“Obviously the feeling of the clinic going from two doctors to a dozen doctors, from a small staff to a large staff is of course different,” he said. “So as that changed, as you had more receptionists that couldn’t possibly know the names of every patient there is something lost, a feeling lost.”
Now, with the new Harrison facility in Silverdale, islanders may obtain care as quickly as they could if a Bainbridge doctor were to meet them in Winslow, Haggar points out.
And, he adds, many of the diagnostic tests such a patient would need today can’t be done in the small clinic setting – although tests like digital X-ray and mammography are offered in Winslow since the clinic joined forces with Virginia Mason a decade ago, a move that also “placed consultants at our fingertips.”
“All in all, it’s safer to use those fully staffed services than it is to come down in the middle of the night with one person trying take care of you,” he said.
While Haggar admits that people who recall the old days might miss the personal touch, he believes people receive better service, overall.
“Even though it’s less personal from the patients’ point of view and, quite frankly, less satisfying on a personal level for the physician, the ultimate care is better. We’ll see the patients as often, but there will be someone else involved, too – a diabetes nurse, a dietician, a pharmacist.”
Haggar believes that the nature of medicine at Virginia Mason Winslow will continue to evolve, reflecting changes nationwide. But some things won’t change, he believes.
“You look at what Bourns and Wilt did, what their attitude was, it was just: Take care of people. If someone needs to be seen, see them,” Haggar said. “Wilt saw a lot of people quickly. Bourns might spend and hour and a half with a patient. At the end of the month, they split the profits 50-50. There was never any thought of ‘I’m working harder than you are,’ and I think that attitude carried through.
“Even though our group is 14 doctors, the attitude is, you do your job and you see your patients and you pull your weight. But there’s not anybody there who’s in it for themselves.”
