Premier HealthNet Physician Celebrates More Than 50 Years of Medical Practice in Springboro
T.C. Garland, DO, says medicine has changed over time, but purpose for doing it hasn’t
DAYTON, Ohio (February 16, 2013) – A lot has changed since T. C. Garland, DO, first set up his medical practice in Springboro in 1958.
At that time, Dr. Garland did everything in his small town office from delivering babies to performing minor surgeries such as tonsillectomies. Today Dr. Garland, of SureCare Medical Center, celebrates more than 50 years of practice, and much like the community of Springboro, medicine has changed a lot since then.
In half a century, Springboro has transformed from being mostly farm land into neighborhoods. The back roads where Dr. Garland used to travel for home visits and births have now been replaced by highways. His medical practice – once run as a one-man show – is comprised of a team of doctors and is part of one of the area’s largest physician primary care networks, Premier HealthNet.
Still, time hasn’t touched one aspect of Dr. Garland’s practice and that happens to be the reason he pursued medicine in the first place.
“I just love my people,” Dr. Garland said about his patients, some of whom he has had since the day he opened his practice. “I look forward to seeing them and I think they look forward to seeing me when they need me.”
A New York native, Dr. Garland became interested in medicine through his childhood involvement in Boy Scouts and his experience with First Aid. He graduated in pre-med from the University of Notre Dame in 1953 and received his medical degree from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1957. He landed in Southwest Ohio through a clinical internship in Dayton.
After completing his internship, Dr. Garland purchased an existing practice in Springboro with the intent of running it long enough to pay off his school debt and then he would return to his home state. But his plans changed as his family and practice simultaneously grew, causing him to dig deeper roots in the Springboro community. He spent the next couple of decades focusing solely on his practice and his six children.
“As my practice got busy and my family grew, I felt that staying in Springboro made sense,” Dr. Garland said.
Perhaps the time devoted to his practice was one of the most valuable contributions he could ever give to his community. Dr. Garland began most of his days doing early morning rounds at the hospital and then he would see up to 100 patients a day at his medical practice. Some days he would return home after 10 p.m. only to be awakened in the middle of the night to deliver a baby.
“There were things that came up every day,” Dr. Garland said when asked to recall his most memorable moments. “I delivered a baby in the back seat of my convertible on the way to the hospital. She was full term and in labor and we needed to get her to the hospital so I got out my convertible and headed north. This was before I-75 ever existed. It just happened that we had the baby before we got to the hospital.”
Another fulfilling part of Dr. Garland’s practice is his work in aviation medicine. For 40 years, Dr. Garland has been one of the only air medical examiners in Warren County, conducting physicals on pilots and determining their fitness to fly everything from private planes to large commercial jets. Last year, he conducted 150 examinations for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Dr. Garland still approaches medicine at age 80 with the same passion he had right out of medical school. He just does it in less hours than he did 50 years ago. Today, he needs that extra time for fishing, flying his own plane, and of course, treating some of his 14 grandchildren to a weekly breakfast at the Waffle House.
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