Healing the body. Healing the soul.

Today’s generation of Bison physicians are treating more than the body as they bring their skills to heal patients through research, global missions and reach into low-resource areas.

Janel Shoun-Smith | 615-966-7078  |  08/23/2024

Lipscomb has long been known as a place that prepares students to go to medical school. The names of many a physician who graduated from Lipscomb may spring to mind: Roy Ezell (LA ’49), Burton Elrod, (BA ’72) Gary Jerkins (BS ’74), David Netterville (BS ’81), Steve Staggs (LA ’71, BS ’75). 

Today, a new generation of Lipscomb alumni are practicing—and teaching future physicians—the lessons learned at Lipscomb and in their practice: that medicine is about more than healing the body, it’s also about healing the soul.

Whether it is through long-term research, bringing quality care to rural areas of Tennessee, supporting parents through a difficult birth or simply going the extra mile for patients in need, Lipscomb alumni physicians are caring for bodies and souls throughout the region in Christian love.

LEARN MORE: Each of these Lipscomb Bison doctors featured in the fall 2024 edition of Lipscomb Now magazine has a unique story to tell.

• Dr. Johnetta Blakely: Finding new hope every day
• Dr. Eric Grogan: Healing cancer now. Preventing cancer in the future.
• Dr. Scott Guthrie: Caring for infants from their first breath, locally, statewide and globally
• Dr. Luvell Glanton: Health science students get small-group mentoring through alumni society
• Dr. James Loden: Alumnus James C. Loden ‘stuck to the plan’ and built a thriving practice

LEARN MORE: Today's top doctors interact with today's students through the J.S. Ward Society

Dr. Luvell Glanton (BS ’97)

St. Louis, Missouri, and Nashville
Anesthesiology and Pain Management Specialist, Hannibal Regional Healthcare System
Lawyer, Law Offices of Luvell L. Glanton
 

“You have to have compassion,” Dr. Luvell Glanton Jr., a pain management provider and anesthesiologist in Hannibal, Missouri, told Lipscomb students in 2023 when he was on campus as part of the J.S. Ward Society’s physician-in-residence program. 

“I feel compassion for all of my patients, but for those who have yet to get the pain relief that they seek, I significantly feel for those patients. They face roadblocks created by the opioid epidemic, insurance and others not believing that their pain is real. It is important for their pain to be taken seriously,” he said, relating a story about one patient who was referred to him for a standard pain treatment.

Glanton took the time to not only look deeper into the patient’s medical history, but to also recruit a fellow physician to give the patient an MRI when insurance declined to cover the test. The MRI revealed a mass pressing onto the patients’ spine. Fortunately for the patient, the mass was still operable.

He also holds a jurisprudence from Saint Louis University and splits his time between managing a hospital interventional pain management practice in St. Louis and practicing law alongside his father at the Law Offices of Luvell L. Glanton in Nashville.

Dr. Johnetta Blakely (BA ’94)

Nashville
Medical Oncologist and Executive Vice President of Quality and Clinic Operations at Tennessee Oncology
 

“I don’t know of another place where I could have Jesus sitting next to me all day,” said Johnetta Blakely (BA ’94), a Nashville oncologist, speaking both metaphorically and literally. She has a small Jesus figurine bobbling on a spring on her desk at Tennessee Oncology. For her, it is more than a cute knick-knack.

“I don’t know how I tell patients the things I have to tell them, but the words always come to me, and I think that is because of Jesus,” said Blakely, who sees about 15 new patients each week dealing with a cancer diagnosis.

Blakely attended medical school at the University of Tennessee at Memphis and planned to specialize in surgery or geriatric care until she volunteered to work with cancer patients at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. As she saw the hope in the patients, she realized her calling.

Just five years after graduating from Lipscomb, she was one of the leading clinical researchers at The West Clinic, a center for oncology, hematology and radiology in West Tennessee. She focused on treating sarcoma (tumors of the bone and muscles) in adults.

In 2011, she and her family moved back to Nashville and Blakely joined Tennessee Oncology, the largest private practice oncology group in Tennessee, caring for more than 85% of the cancer patients in the Nashville area and more than 50% of the patients across the state. She worked in Nashville, Clarksville and Springfield before becoming the executive vice president of quality and clinic operations and opening a clinic site in Cookeville, where she practices today.

She works mostly with breast and lung cancer, but in the more rural area of Cookeville, she is seeing patients with all types of cancer. Local providers told the practice that some patients in the Cookeville area were waiting up to six weeks to be seen locally prior to the Tennessee Oncology clinic, said Blakely. She sees an outpouring of gratitude from patients who appreciate her providing such crucial care locally.

“I work hard there, but when I drive home that night I feel like I have done something good that day,” she said, especially because not everyone is willing to make the drive to provide care in the areas where it is most needed.

“For someone in a leadership position, it is important to see what it is like in a single doctor clinic and the challenges it brings,” she said.

Dr. Scott Guthrie (BA ’95)

Jackson, Tennessee
Souse: Alumna Shannon Emery (BS ’93)
Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Chair of Pediatrics, Ayers Children’s Medical Center, Jackson-Madison County General Hospital

As a specialist in neonatal-perinatal medicine, Dr. Scott Guthrie, spends a lot of time in prenatal consultations, working with the parents of a baby expected to be born with health problems and to explain what medicine can or cannot do for their child’s particular situation.

His study at Lipscomb, especially in bioethics within the philosophy program, has helped him to be able to sit down with a family and process the unexpected outcomes and help them make decisions in a compassionate way, he said.

“Because I may have to deal with the death of a newborn, one of the most tragic times in someone’s  life, the opportunity for spiritual discussions frequently arises. Being able to address the entire family and not to be afraid to talk about faith is very valuable,” said Guthrie, a professor in pediatrics at Vanderbilt and who serves as the chair of the pediatric department at Ayers Children’s Medical Center at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital in Jackson, Tennessee.

“I’ve been asked to pray with families. I’ve been asked to baptize a child. Those things are central to people’s faith and it’s important to be able to walk with them through those periods and feel confident doing that,” he said. “Lipscomb prepared me to be able to do that and do that well.”

Guthrie walked away from Lipscomb with an additional passion for mission work and global health. As a physician, he discovered that he enjoys finding creative solutions to the challenges of healthcare in low-resource environments.

The desire to help and save babies' lives has led him throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and to Central and South Asia. Recently, he began working with the Institute for Child Healthcare Africa in Tanzania where he helps lead what has become the largest neonatal medicine conference on the African continent.

Guthrie also conducts research intended to improve neonatal care both in the U.S. and globally. He has worked to develop a way for infants to receive an aerosolized version of a needed lung medicine and to prevent a serious intestinal disease in newborns. He has active global projects in Jordan, Azerbaijan, Kenya, Malawi, and Ethiopia.

In 2022, Guthrie traveled to India to prepare doctors in five hospitals for a clinical trial of a new technique to treat respiratory distress syndrome in premature infants. Lipscomb Ward Fellow Kaylee Wu (BS ’23), now at Wake Forest Medical School, was selected to serve as a clinical research assistant for the trip to train providers on how to perform the technique and explain its proven effectiveness.

Dr. Eric Grogan (BS ’95)

Nashville
Spouse: Alumna Melanie Martin (MACM ’21, LA ’92)
Associate Professor of Thoracic Surgery, Medicine, Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vice Chair of Research, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Co-Director MASLAB, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

Dr. Eric Grogan, associate professor of surgery at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Department of Thoracic Surgery, not only conducts surgery on lung and esophageal cancer patients, but he is also constantly looking toward the health of future cancer patients as well.

Grogan coordinates the MASLAB at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, a biobank storing blood and tissue specimens and clinical histories that one day may lead to earlier and less invasive detection of the most common cancer in the world: lung cancer.

“Even if I don’t solve any major problems in my lifetime, if I can just help the next generation of major scientists to be able to solve them, for me, that is worth it,” said Grogan, who oversees the MASLAB team along with Steven Deppen and Dr. Fabien Maldonado.

The true heroes are his team, he says, including several Lipscomb students and alumni in the last few years who carry out the work of obtaining patient consents; collecting, cataloging and storing blood and tissue specimens; and conducting the analysis needed to use all the data to develop a “clinical calculator.” 

Lung cancer is the only form of cancer that does not have a routinely used blood, or biomarker, test to confirm its presence in the body, said Grogan. Lung cancer can be caused by multiple cell types, and it is difficult to find one blood test to recognize all those biomarkers, he said. Therefore, today’s doctors can only choose to watch the patient’s progress with imaging or send them for invasive procedures to biopsy the lesion in the lung.

Someday, physicians of the future could use the MASLAB model to determine the percentage chance of a patient having lung cancer to make a more informed decision about whether to recommend a surgery or not. 

“When I was at Lipscomb go back to Paducah, Kentucky, and practice with my father,” said Grogan, “but, I just kept praying that God would use all the skills and talents he gave me, and he brought me this job that involves patient care, research and educating others.

“My role to give back is to improve the lives of patients in the clinic, to lead research teams and to help those in training improve their surgical skills and help their future patients.”

Dr. James Loden (BS ’87)

Nashville
Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, College of Medicine, Department of Ophthalmology
President, Loden Vision Centers

Dr. James C. Loden, an ophthalmological surgeon and the owner of Loden Vision Centers with five locations, also takes a community approach when infusing his faith into his medical care. 

“From my perspective faith is about how I treat my employees, and how I treat my patients,” said Loden, who has facilities not only in Nashville and its suburbs but in the more rural Paris, Tennessee, as well. 

Loden entered Lipscomb, a university with a reputation of getting students into medical school, firmly knowing that he wanted to be an eye surgeon, and Lipscomb did not disappoint. Loden mentions Oliver Yates (BA ’56) and Paul Langford as influences on his path.

Loden’s father, Dr. James P. Loden (BS ’52) was also a nationally recognized ophthalmologist in Nashville and one-time member of the Lipscomb Board of Trustees. Loden grew up watching his family both provide medical care and operate the business side of the practice.

He knew better than most that for a doctor, work/life balance is tough. “The doctor’s mentality must be that I’m here for my patients, and I’m going to see them whether it’s convenient or not,” he said.

During his medical studies, he intended to take over his father’s practice, but due to his father’s untimely death, he ended up starting his own practice seven years later.

He draws on biblical scriptures, such as the book of James, to craft his company’s employee-centric culture and emphasis on empowering patients to have an informed agency over their own medical decisions, he said.

“It has been very important in our company culture to make sure that our doctors are making recommendations that are in the best interest of the patients, and that we allow patients to be part of the decision-making process,” explained Loden. “We try to review their options with them, but we try to let them have the autonomy to make the final decision in their own personal health care.”