NEWS/OPINION
A10 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2020
OUR NEW NEIGHBORS
New doctor fi nds the right fi t in Hermiston
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
Orthopedic surgeon James
Whittum studied medicine in
Ohio, completed his residency
in Chicago and worked at hospi-
tals in New England, but when he
decided to look for new employ-
ment this year he turned his atten-
tion west.
“I was looking for an area that
was growing, that was a little more
economically vibrant, but still a
smaller, more rural community,”
he said.
Whittum joined Good Shepherd
Health Care System in Hermiston
as an orthopedic surgeon this year
after moving to Echo in September
with his wife Rita. The couple has
two young adult children who did
not come with them.
For Whittum, Good Shepherd
offered what he describes as an
impressive staff, physical facilities
and equipment for a hospital of its
size.
“The people I am working with
are top-notch for a small commu-
nity hospital,” he said. “The qual-
ity amazes me.”
He chose orthopedics in med-
ical school after initially plan-
ning to be a primary care pro-
vider. As he got a peek inside the
life of a physician, he realized that
he often got frustrated with people
who expected a doctor to fi x them
but wouldn’t follow the doctor’s
instructions.
“It’s my job as a physician to
help you as a patient, but you as
a patient have to help as well,” he
said. “(In primary care settings) I
say, ‘Mrs. Smith, you have high
blood pressure, you need to take
this medicine,’ and Mrs. Smith says
she doesn’t like that medicine.”
Fixing broken bones, injured
tendons and other orthopedic spe-
cialities tends to be “more con-
crete,” Whittum said. He looks at
X-rays, notes where things don’t
line up correctly, and takes action.
“It’s more hands on,” he said.
Whittum has more than 25 years
of experience in the fi eld. He said
in medical school he was told that
every fi ve years what he learned
would become outdated and he’s
found that to be true.
“It’s an evolving fi eld, and I
embrace that,” he said. “Change is
good.”
That change goes beyond just
using different procedures. Twen-
ty-fi ve years ago, it wasn’t com-
mon for patients to come in with
ideas for treatment from the inter-
net. While Google can be informa-
tive, Whittum said, there is also a
lot of misinformation and claims
that don’t match the available data.
Whittum said he has enjoyed
EDITOR’S NOTE
This story is part of an annual
series by the East Oregonian
called “Our New Neighbors,”
which introduces the community
to people who have moved here
in the past year.
getting to know his patients,
his neighbors and others in the
area. The demographics here are
younger and more heavily Latino
than other places he has worked,
and it seems like “everyone is a
transplant” from another city.
He said this side of the coun-
try seems to be friendlier than the
places he has lived on the East
Coast.
“Everyone
is
certainly
approachable,” he said. “People
are excited to meet you.”
Contributed photo
James Whittum is an orthopedic
surgeon at Good Shepherd Health
Care System in Hermiston.
COLUMN
The parable of the car wash: There’s always another way
T
childish notion that all peo-
he past decade
ple of a certain political
brought us many
wonderful things,
party are evil or stupid or
from life-changing advances wrong 100% of the time.
in technology and medicine Sharing a video clip or other
to worldwide decreases in
example on social media
poverty and illiteracy.
and claiming that it’s evi-
It also brought
dence that Repub-
us an increasingly
licans or Demo-
divided nation
crats are all (fi ll
— or perhaps a
in the blank) is no
nation where long-
more helpful than
standing divides
sharing a photo
are increasingly
of a single cat to
on full public dis-
“prove” that all
play thanks to
cats are black.
J ADE
social media and
The truth is that
M C D OWELL
24-hours cable
most,
if not all,
COMMENT
news.
of the issues our
For those who
country faces are
believe such a divide is a
immensely complex and
bad thing, I would like to
have no easy answers. In
suggest a few New Year’s
some cases, certain solu-
resolutions that will help
tions are verifi ably more
each of us, as Ghandi so
effective than others. But
aptly put it, be the change
in many cases, what we
we wish to see in the world. have are two groups of peo-
First, let’s retire the
ple who weighed the pros
and cons and came up with
a different answer because
they value different things.
Case in point: I once was
participating in a car wash
to raise money for an extra-
curricular group I was part
of, along with two peo-
ple I’ll call John and Emily.
Partway through the fund-
raiser, John pulled me aside.
“Can you try and keep
Emily from being the one
fi lling up the buckets?” he
asked. “She doesn’t put
enough soap in them, so it
takes longer to scrub the
bugs off the cars.”
A moment later, Emily
pulled me aside.
“Can we get John to do
something besides fi ll up
buckets?” she said. “He puts
way too much soap in them,
so it takes too long to rinse
off the cars.”
The confi dence each had
that their way was right
made an impression on me.
Maybe you’re the type of
person who believes there
is, in fact, a single, indis-
putable “right” answer to
how much soap should
have gone in the buck-
ets and everyone else is an
idiot compared to you for
not seeing it. Or, maybe you
feel more like I did: The
amount of soap in the buck-
ets was “right” for each per-
son, based on their prefer-
ences of getting the washing
or the rinsing done more
quickly. And at the end of
the day, both amounts of
soap got the car clean.
I’m not saying that peo-
ple shouldn’t advocate for
their own preference for
“soap” in our nation’s col-
lective bucket. Constructive
discussion can help the best
solutions rise to the top.
What I am saying is in
2020, let’s agree to stop
contributing to simplistic
“everyone’s a total hero or
complete villain” thinking.
Let’s grow out of the
immature name calling and
act like adults (yes, I’m
looking at you, people who
think you’re being clever
or helpful by commenting
“Flush down Kate Brown”
or “Trump is orange
hehehe” on everything).
Let’s develop the humil-
ity to realize that all human
beings, including ourselves,
are very frequently wrong,
in ways we never even
realize.
Let’s resolve to not share
anything via Facebook,
text, email, word of mouth
or other mediums that we
haven’t made a good faith
effort to vet.
I am constantly disap-
pointed by the number of
seemingly intelligent people
I am friends with on social
media who constantly share
fake quotes and made-up
“facts” that are easily
debunked with a 30-second
Google search or just some
basic critical thinking.
Let’s stop seeing serious
issues such as national secu-
rity or health care in terms
of scoring “points” for your
“team.”
Instead, let’s all resolve
to do a better job of fi nding
common ground. Instead
of endless debates about
whether global warming is a
hoax or will kill us all in 20
years, the world would be
a better place if people put
down their keyboards and
spent that energy on plant-
ing a tree or picking up lit-
ter together.
We can’t control the
national dialogue, but we
can hold ourselves account-
able for our own contribu-
tions to it.
MOVED!
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