By Marie Herndon
Afram News
https://aframnews.com/
Imagine growing-up and living in a community with no ambulance, no urgent medical care facility, no “911 service”, one hospital, and one medical doctor. The one medical doc- tor was there to mainly ser- vice a college population but also served the community and surrounding rural areas. Prairie View College’s Emery R. Owens was that doctor.
He was the pharmacist, family practitioner, obstetrician, surgeon, and any other required specialized practice. He was on-call 24 hours a day; seven days a week because he made “house Calls”, after regular working hours. For patients who could not come to him, he went to them.
No appointment was made for a visit to the doctor. If you were physically able, you would go to the college (now, Prairie View University) hospital lobby area, sign-in, and sit on one of several long, hard benches that resembled a church pew, and wait, and wait, and wait until your name was called by the nurse. Being called in to see the doctor was seldom in the order that you signed-in; but rather based on the nurse’s observation of the most seriously ill or who was most in need of immediate medical attention. Additionally, Dr. Owens delivered every baby born in the community and provided both pre-and post-natal care.
