Training rural doctors part of practice

Timothy Newcomb
Tribune assistant editor

Jim Hubbard

IRONWOOD, Mich. -- Jim Hubbard doesn’t run just any kind of family practice in this small town in Michigan's upper peninsula. No, he runs a full-spectrum rural practice, all the while instructing young doctors.
  Hubbard, a 1987 Lynden High School graduate, operates a family practice and spends his time doing a little bit of everything. “I am the town doctor, an all-purpose doctor,” he said. “I deliver babies, do surgeries and visit nursing homes.”
  And he is also teaching Michigan State University students how to do the same thing.
  As a member of the MSU faculty, Hubbard hosts students working on their two-month practicums and will also host one or two doctors working on their residency each year.
  “I get them excited about rural medicine,” he said.
  He has become well known and now students from all across the United States are coming to him to learn rural medicine.
  He said his Grandview Clinic in Ironwood has become a great spot for students to learn because it is so broad a practice and the nearby Grandview Hospital is so supportive of the students.
  Hubbard was recently honored by MSU’s College of Human Medicine with the Community Volunteer Faculty Award for his work with the medical students.
  After graduating from Lynden, Hubbard served in the U.S. Army and then attended Western Washington University on the GI Bill. He went on to study rural medicine at the University of Washington Medical School, where he graduated in 1998.
  After completing his residency in Tacoma, Hubbard moved to Michigan and has been there for nearly the last seven years.
  Hubbard said the opportunity to serve a range of patients from critical-care to newborns is exactly why he went into the style of medicine he did.
  Hubbard has also been given MSU’s Excellence in Teaching Award and the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation Pfizer Teacher Development Award.
  “When Jim became aware of the possibility of having (College of Human Medicine) students with him during their rural family medicine clerkship, he immediately volunteered and has been an outstanding mentor to our young professionals ever since,” said David Luoma, community assistant dean and CEO of the Upper Peninsula Health Education Corporation.
  Hubbard has been married to his wife Rachel, a Bellingham High School graduate, for nearly 20 years. The couple does not have children.
  Hubbard’s parents, Bill and Bertha, still live in Lynden and Jim is able to visit Lynden periodically.
  E-mail Timothy Newcomb at tim@lyndentribune.com.