14
doc • Spring 2015
Kentucky
Community Interest
Philip Hall, M.D.
Have Halothane, Will Travel
By Robert P. Granacher Jr., M.D.,
M.B.A.
Dr. Phil Hall never dreamed while growing
up in Lexington, that someday he would
practice anesthesiology in a war torn area
such as Syria. During his last service there,
an indigenous female nurse came into his
hospital with a gun and began asking if
“there were any Americans present.” She
fired the gun into the air. As an exercise in
caution, Dr. Hall was evacuated from the
area, taken back to a bordering country, and
returned to the United States. This was the
last occasion Phil was able to serve in Syria
and a few months after he left other medical
colleagues were kidnapped, held and then
released months later.
Many years prior to his missions to Syria, he
completed medical school at the University
of Kentucky, thereafter finishing a residency
in anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic. These
accomplishments fulfilled a childhood
dream to become a doctor. After returning
to Lexington, he has practiced at St. Joseph
Hospital for more than 30 years while adding mission trips to his practice routine in
the last decade. Phil and I discussed his
traveling medical missions one afternoon on
the surgical floor at the St. Joseph Hospital
on a gray December day prior to Christmas.
He related that about seven years ago, he
was asked by a nurse anesthetist colleague
to become a participant in the Knoxville
Medical Mission.
This organization has been traveling to provide benevolent medical care for about 15
years. For seven years since her inquiry, Dr.
Hall has flown to Antigua, Guatemala where
he has practiced anesthesiology at the same
hospital each time. He has provided services
to medically deprived Guatemalans to assist
his general surgery, urology and gynecology
colleagues. By chance encounter, my wife
and I met again with Phil and his Lexington
team in January at Bluegrass Airport as they
were embarking again to Guatemala.
More recently, Dr. Hall has become associated with Doctors without Borders (D.W.B.).
He sought out this organization in order to
be of service in areas other than Guatemala.
Prior to his service in Syria, he provided
D.W.B. anesthesia services in the African
south Sudan. The patients he served there
were severely deprived, had no running
water or electricity, and resided in a very
small population in the south of this primitive country. His operating room environment was within a large tent, but he had to
live in a small personal tent while on his
mission.
Doctors without Borders first began in the
1970s in France. It functions as a nonpolitical, non-religious organization, and it avoids
taking sides in politics, war, or other geopolitical issues. After Sudan, Dr. Hall was sent
to Syria twice in 2013 by D.W.B. During
his first trip he found the Syrians to be very
friendly and helpful.