The Garden City Telegram

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Perkins making move to St. Catherine Hospital

Published 11/11/2009 in Local News

By SHAJIA AHMAD

sahmad@gctelegram.com

Nearly 30 years after beginning as an emergency medical technician in Garden City just out of high school, a local doctor is taking charge of the very practice he began in.

Dr. Harold Perkins is closing his private practice at Plaza Medical Center in Garden City after 11 years to take over as medical director for emergency services at St. Catherine Hospital.

"We've talked about it for over a year, and now just seemed like a good time," Perkins said. "They've got a good crew down there, and I'm looking forward to it."

Hospital spokeswoman Janie Wimmer said the family practice doctor who also serves as the county coroner will be taking on his new role Jan. 4, 2010.

"We're excited to have Dr. Perkins. He's always had a passion for emergency medicine," she said.

Raised in a military family, Perkins already had been to 10 different schools by the time he reached the fourth grade, he said, and found himself in Garden City in 1981 as an emergency technician for Finney County Emergency Medical Services after having completed an emergency training class in Wichita, just barely out of Mulvane Senior High School.

A 1995 graduate of the University of Kansas School of Medicine, Perkins said he did a fair amount of emergency work during his residency training at St. Francis Via Christi Family Practice before returning to Garden City in 1999 to open his private practice and take over as medical director of Finney County EMS, a position he has volunteered in for more than a decade.

Finney County EMS Director Bob Prewitt was Perkins' boss and the director back then, too — he's been at the head of the department since 1976 — and when he first hired Perkins, he was surprised at how "street savvy" the young paramedic was.

"As an early generation technician, he was smarter than the Dickens," Prewitt said, adding that Perkins' decades of experience in both emergency and family practice medicine will serve him well in his new position. "He's the guy we unload (patients) on, and in this profession you just can't get ahead of experience. The assessment work you do in an emergency position is paramount in taking care of someone."

When he's not in the office or emergency room, Perkins is the ringside physician for the Bad Boyz Boxing Club in Garden City and has been since 2000. In addition, he's been a karate instructor at the Garden City Recreation Commission for several years and sat on the USD 457 Board of Education, as well.

With decades of work in both fields — primary health care and emergency medicine — Perkins said he'll miss delivering babies the most, a "joyful aspect of medicine." The doctor once chaired St. Catherine's Maternal-Child Health department.

"That's just not something you do a lot in the emergency room, no matter what Hollywood says," Perkins said and laughed. "Right now, it's a new challenge and a new role, and I'm looking forward to working with the physicians and nurses down there. It's nothing like 'ER,' the show — that's the Hollywood version — and they go for the dramatic. But, on occasion, it gets pretty close."

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