Meet the DO who served in the White House Medical Unit during the Reagan administration

This month, we sat down with Edward Yob, DO, an AOA board-certified dermatologist, military veteran and, to The DO’s knowledge, the first osteopathic physician to serve as a member of the White House Medical Unit from 1980 to 1985. Dr. Yob served in the U.S. Air Force and was a participant in the Health Professions Scholarship Program—and one of the first DOs to graduate from the program. His work paved the way for future DOs to serve in prestigious roles in the White House Medical Unit, including the current Physician to the President, Kevin O’Connor, DO, and his predecessor, Sean Conley, DO.

Following is an edited Q&A with Dr. Yob, chronicling his illustrious career.

Tell us about your journey to osteopathic medicine.

I came from a small coal-mining town called Plymouth, Pennsylvania. I was fortunate enough to have an uncle who was a general practitioner, but the idea of anybody growing up in that town and becoming a physician was unheard of. However, I had an early interest in medicine.

A few friends and I would hang around the fire department to feed this interest. The department started us out on the ambulance unit. During our time there, we would take the calls and help with whatever came our way. Later, one of my closest friends went on to osteopathic medical school in Philadelphia. He would eventually convince me to give Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (PCOM) a shot. I graduated from PCOM in 1975.

In medical school you participated in the Health Professions Scholarship Program and served in the United States Air Force. You were one of the first commissioned DOs from this program. Tell us more about this time.

In my second year of medical school, the Armed Forces introduced a new program called the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP). I became one of the first DOs to participate in this program and served in the Air Force. My biggest piece of advice for medical students looking to follow a similar path is to make sure you understand the obligation.

When I was in training with other doctors in the HPSP, they didn’t fully understand their obligations. They went in thinking, “I’m going to join and take the scholarship, but I’m going to be a heart surgeon,” without realizing that if the military doesn’t currently need a heart surgeon, you might not be able to get training in that specialty with the military.

You served in the White House Medical Unit from 1980-1985 as the personal physician to former Vice President George H.W. Bush and assistant physician to former President Ronald Reagan. How did you get into that role?

I took my first assignment after my family medicine residency as teaching faculty at what was then known as Andrews Air Force Base (now known as Joint Base Andrews). At the base, they had a colonel who was also a PCOM graduate. I asked him what work he did, and he told me his office sent physicians to take care of all the pilots and generals when they traveled to NATO meetings. He also mentioned that his office covered former Vice President Walter Mondale when he left the country.

At that time, during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, there was only one White House physician. Thus, there wasn’t a physician specifically for the vice president, but the Secret Service insisted that the VP have a physician when he left the country. I told my colleague, “If you ever need somebody, let me know!” He replied, “Well, we do need somebody, because we currently don’t have anyone in our department who really fits the bill.”

I jumped at the opportunity and got certified as a flight surgeon so I would be ready. Several months later, I started getting calls to accompany VP Mondale on his international trips.

Eventually, I became the go-to physician, and the Secret Service called me directly whenever VP Mondale left the country. President Carter lost his re-election in 1980, and that same year, the Secret Service insisted on a separate physician for the vice president. This led me to a full-time position serving as VP George H.W. Bush’s physician.

Backing up to earlier in your career, you completed a family medicine residency. After working in primary care for eight years, you returned to training to complete a dermatology residency. What was it like going from being an experienced attending physician to being back in training?

When you’re a physician at the White House, you have a lot of ability to make things happen. If you needed to get an air evac plane, you pick up the phone, and it would happen. Mind you, when I applied to my dermatology residency after working for years in family medicine, I was still in the Air Force. They sponsored me for residency, and I attended Boston University and Tufts University, as they had a combined dermatology program.

When I started, it was a big transition, as I went from being an autonomous White House physician to having to get my prescriptions countersigned for creams and ointments. I also had to have all of my notes countersigned.

You have to get into the right mindset when you go back to training like that. You want to learn everything you can, and it’s also helpful to remember that it’s temporary. At the end of the three years, you get this piece of paper that will allow you to practice the kind of medicine you want for the rest of your life.

Throughout your career in dermatology, your subspecialty was cutaneous oncology and Mohs. Share with us some accomplishments from this time.

After completing my dermatology residency, I owed two years to the Air Force. I went back to Andrews Air Force base and eventually became the chief of dermatology. Once my obligation to the Air Force was complete, I moved to McAlester, Oklahoma, to start my practice from scratch. I spent nine years at that practice, but I needed to move to a larger city where I could focus on skin cancer.

At that time, in Tulsa, there was no Mohs surgeon, so I was recruited by one of the hospital groups there. That hospital group ended up pulling out of dermatology, so I took over the practice. While running Tulsa Dermatology Associates, I started the first AOA-accredited Mohs surgery fellowship and trained six fellows over the years. I became very involved with the American Society for Mohs Surgery. I ended up teaching in their fundamentals course for about 20 years as one of the core faculty. I also became president of that organization, in addition to the American Osteopathic College of Dermatology and the Oklahoma State Dermatology Society.

I was heading to the twilight of my career and was having a difficult time finding a dermatologist to take over my clinic. I was able to secure a future for my staff by merging my Tulsa Dermatology Associates with the Oklahoma Cancer Specialists and Research Institute.

After all this, I thought I would focus on patient care until I retired. The merger was on a Wednesday and by that Friday, I went to the first physician group meeting with the owners and was put on the board of directors. Before I knew it, I became vice president of that group until I retired. We are talking 400 employees and five offices. I was ready to retire in January 2020 and then this thing called COVID came, and my retirement went on hold.

You led the COVID Taskforce at the Oklahoma Cancer Specialists and Research Institute in the early days of the pandemic. What was that like?

Leading the 10-person task force, I had two main things in mind: One was to keep the practice functional and open, and the other, most important thing, was to offer as much protection as we possibly could to our patients and staff. If we had sick staff, we couldn’t take care of patients. We were cancer specialists and thus had very vulnerable patients.

We relied heavily on the directions coming out of the CDC and the White House. We watched all of those early briefings and we tended to follow the advice. Our main infusion center in Tulsa could hold 100 patients at a time and we would see 600 patients a day. We also had three other infusion centers in two different towns. On almost a daily basis I was getting the latest information from the Oklahoma State Health Department. With this information, I would put out a newsletter to all of our employees.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the taskforce would meet twice a day, We were doing those meetings seven days a week for a while. Once things settled in, we transitioned to daily meetings. I also worked very closely with the maintenance staff, as we were building barriers in the cafeteria and offices and ordering supplies. I spent a lot of time tracking down personal protective equipment.

We were able to get in on the ground floor when the immunizations first came out and the Tulsa Health Department said we could set up an immunization clinic within the first week. I made sure to make myself available. I rounded through the whole clinic all the time and let staff and patients ask any question they wanted. During my time heading the COVID taskforce, the line I quoted all the time was, “This is a fluid situation.” In hindsight, it was a good way to end a career. It was something very different and something I didn’t think would last 14 months, but it sure did. Now I am happily retired.

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