Introduction to Dr. Laurence Gee

 

Introduction to Dr. Laurence Gee

I received my medical school training at the University of Utah.  During my senior year of medical school, the obstetrical department of the LDS hospital employed me.  That year the hospital did not have enough interns to staff the labor and delivery department so they hired senior medical students to cover from 7:00 pm to 7:00am.  I worked every third night and delivered over 500 babies and assisted on numerous other deliveries during that time. 

I completed a rotating internship at the Dee Memorial Hospital in Ogden and completed two years of pediatric residency at the University of Utah Affiliated Hospitals.  During my first year of pediatric residency the hospital in Ogden did not have enough interns to staff the emergency room, so I worked one night a week in the emergency room in Ogden.

Once I completed my training in pediatrics, I opened a private practice for the diseases of Infants, Children and Adolescents in the town of Lander, Wyoming.  The population at that time was approximately 7,000.  There were about 30,000 people in the surrounding county area.  When I went into practice in 1965, I was the fifth pediatrician in the State of Wyoming and the only one in the western half of the state.

Wyoming is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States.  The area is 97,814 sq mi
(253,348 km2)  - 

Width 280 miles (450 km)  - 

Length 360 miles (581 km)

Inasmuch as there were a number of people that did not want to go to the other doctors in the town, I took care of all ages of patients and also delivered babies.  Not long after I arrived, the veterinarians had a convention in Jackson, Wyoming and there were none in town.  A patient of mine had a horse that ran into a barbed wire fence and cut her shoulder.  She was a prize racehorse and so I was asked to sew up the horse’s shoulder.  I joked that it was ok, because the horse was only 3 years old.

I had been trained to take out tonsils and adenoids and put tubes in ears.  None of the doctors in Lander were trained to put tubes in ears, so that was something new to them.  No one had ever done an exchange transfusion for hypebilirubinemia of the newborn due to erythroblastosis fetalis,  so I did the first one in that hospital.  I had a patient with Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and wanted to do a bone marrow aspiration, but there was no bone marrow needle in the hospital, so I had to improvise.

We had a small 40 bed hospital when I first came to Lander.  They later built a 100-bed hospital.

I was drafted into the Navy as served as the base pediatrician at Naval Air Station Lemoore, California and took call in the obstetrical department at night and delivered babies and assisted at c-sections. 

I was a founding member of the Wyoming Pediatric Society. 

I trained residents, interns and child health associates and physicians assistants in my office in Lander, Wyoming.

Appointments

Pediatric Consultant to Wyoming Children’s Health Services, 1965 to 1996

Alternate Chapter Chairman Wyoming Chapter, American Academy of   Pediatrics 1976-1977

Chapter Chairman Wyoming Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics 1977-1983

President and Founding Member of Wyoming Pediatric Society, 1977-1983

Chief of Staff Bishop Randall Hospital, Lander Wyoming 1970-1972 

Chief of Pediatrics Bishop Randall Hospital, Lander Wyoming      1968-1986, 1990 to 1996.

Clinical Instructor in Pediatrics, University of Wyoming 1980-7

Wyoming Representative to and Council Member of American Academy of Pediatrics District VIII Perinatal Committee, 1990 to 1996

Pediatric Consultant to Wyoming Deaf and Blind Services 1985 to 1996

Medical Director Morning Star Manor Nursing Home, Ft. Washakie 1990-1997

Missionary Medical Advisory Committee, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints 2003-Present

 

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:

Diplomat of the American Board of Pediatrics since 1972         

Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics since 1973          

Fremont County Medical Society 1965-1997

Wyoming State Medical Society 1965-1997

Irish and American Pediatric Society 1996-2000