Printer-friendly format

Dr. Richard M. Briggs leads two lives.

As a cardiothoracic surgeon at St. Mary's Medical Center in Knoxville, he is a physician with a long and distinguished career as a healthcare provider.

As a full colonel in the Medical Corps of the United States Army Reserves, he is a wide-ranging traveler who is no stranger to active military deployments, which include Seoul, South Korea; Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait in connection with the Persian Gulf War; Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan in 2004; and Baghdad, Iraq from November 2005 through March 2006.

Recently, he was awarded the THA Healthcare Hero Award for his longstanding — and outstanding — service.

"I'm very appreciative of this award," said Briggs. "To be honest, though, it's hard taking the title 'hero' when you've seen the soldiers doing what they do: taking a hit from an IED (improvised explosive device), bringing their buddies back from harm's way. I take care of them when they're hurt. I can't put myself in the same category with those people."

Born in West Point, Ky., on the outskirts of Louisville, Briggs has always had a deep connection to and affinity for the military. His father, though not a doctor, received two Purple Hearts for his service as an infantryman in World War II, and his father-in-law is a career army physician.

Even before his military career began, Briggs acquired an international flavor to his education. After attending Elizabethtown High School, he completed his high school studies at the Lycee du Mont Blanc in France.

"I'm an unapologetic Francophile," he noted. "We regularly go there and rent a house a couple of times a year. I consider French and English as my primary languages."

He studied mathematics at Transylvania College and then attended the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, where he graduated in 1978. Meanwhile, he had been active in the Army Reserves since 1974, when he was commissioned a second lieutenant. He went on to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where he completed two residency trainings, in general surgery and cardiothoracic surgery.

"At Brooke, there were two men in particular who became my role models," Briggs said. "They projected an aura of 'I'm in control. Everything is OK.' I have sought to imitate this kind of presence. It is so important to give clear orders without yelling and panicking, which only gets people all worked up. Leaders need to provide leadership."

Certified through several national medical boards and a member of numerous medical societies, Briggs has served as assistant professor of surgery with the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, University of Louisville School of Medicine, and University of Tennessee Medical Center at Knoxville. Some of his other professional activities include having been in private practice with the famous Dr. William DeVries, who performed the first successful permanent artificial heart transplant, and having served as chief of medical staff at St. Mary's Medical Center, as well as practicing privately with East Tennessee Cardiovascular Surgery Group, where he is still a member.

Of course, things get interesting because, well, Briggs' civilian medical endeavors keep getting "interrupted" by active duty deployments abroad.

Still, Briggs sees his military and civilian roles as complementary, and noted that while the deployments have been a challenge to keeping up his practice back home, he has had help in keeping things running smoothly.

"In connection with Desert Storm, I served in a MASH unit with the First Armored Division," he said. "Fortunately, Dr. DeVries covered for me while I was gone. Still, it was quite a challenge. I had been gone some six months, and prior to that I had only been in practice for a year and a half. But it has always worked out. In 2001, I came over to East Tennessee Cardiovascular Surgery Group; I've had two deployments since then, and everyone's been supportive."

Most recently, Briggs served for four months in Baghdad, at the main United States Army hospital. In fact, he said the HBO documentary "Baghdad ER" was about this particular unit.

"We were probably the busiest trauma hospital in the world," he said. "On any given day, the news headlines might very well show up on our doorstep."

For example, he noted that this hospital performed more transfusions than any other unit not just in Iraq, but in the whole military theater. To manage this ongoing need for blood, he said they relied on the "walking blood bank."

He explained, "We performed screening so that the soldiers all knew their blood type. When we were low on blood, we could thus go very quickly from soldier to bag to surgery. This was critical, especially since fresh whole blood is best for trauma.

"It was definitely what I would call a 'damp surgery', where we constantly saw massive injuries. Younger surgeons would come in for two or three weeks and get valuable experience and training from more experienced surgeons."

Significantly, Briggs described the care given to soldiers as not merely cutting-edge, but beyond cutting-edge.

"Recently," he said, "at a series of briefings I gave in Washington, I was asked how the treatment given our soldiers compared to the treatment available to civilians back home. I said it was better. For example, the NovaLung®, a miniature artificial lung, helped us save several lives. The pressure of the blast from an IED will ruin lungs; it's not just shrapnel that's a problem. Or, with the Belmont Rapid Transfuser® we could provide 600-700 cc's of blood per minute."

Also back on the home front, Briggs noted the invaluable help and support of his wife, Stephanie, to whom he has been married for 33 years. They have a farm 10 minutes from their home, where Briggs said he enjoys keeping bees. Also among his "amateur interests," as he called them, are history and French language and culture.

Finally, Briggs carries one especially touching set of memories from his time in Iraq.

"There was a little Iraqi girl who suffered burns on 50 percent of her body. It took some 30 to 40 operations, but we treated her. Every two months, they send a picture of her so we can see her progress. She would have had no chance without us."


February 2007

Tags:

None

Do you know someone else who would like to see this?
Your Email:
Their Email:
Comment:	(Will be included with e-mail)