{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/j678s4m162/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Daniel Knight"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine.  Disclaimer:  The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker’s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice. \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2022-04-01 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Arkansas","family doctors","rural family medicine","physicians","gay"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Arkansas Academy of Family Physicians (corporate name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/194/932/small/Knight_Daniel%284-1-2022%29.mp4_1688068303.jpg?1688068304","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97852/file/194932","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Knight__Daniel_(4-1-2022).mp4"]},"duration":5322.317,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/194/932/small/Knight_Daniel%284-1-2022%29.mp4_1688068303.jpg?1688068304","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97852/file/194932/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97852/file/194932/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/194/932/original/Knight__Daniel_%284-1-2022%29.mp4?1688068274","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":5322.317,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97852/file/194932","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97852/file/194932/transcript/45024","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Transcript of Dr. Daniel Knight interview [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97852/file/194932/transcript/45024/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Dr. Sam Taggart: \n\nGood evening, my name is Sam Taggart and it is 4/01/22.  I am in the home of Dr. Dan Knight in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Today, we are talking to him about his life as a family doctor and especially his life as an educator; an educator of family physicians, as the new challenges that have come on since 1990.  \n\nTo me, the best place to start, Dr. Knight, is at the beginning.\n\nWhen and where were you born? \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nOk, I’m Daniel Knight.  I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on October 31, 1957 and have lived in Little Rock my whole entire life.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat kind of work did your family do?   \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nMy family was in the banking industry.  My mother was a secretary for a banker until she became a banker late in life when they started promoting women; at that point in time, she had been promoted, but never promoted before that....the last 4-5 years of her working life.  My father was a printer for a bank here in Little Rock and ran a print shop for them and then worked more in the administrative area after that for a little bit.  They were both in their own banks for 40 years each.”\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat are your mom and dad’s names and when about where they born?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nHelen Knight was my mother and she was born August 23, 1920 and my dad was Felix Knight born April 25, 1919.  I came along later in their lives, but I have older siblings.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nTalk a little bit about your brothers and sisters.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nMy sisters are twins and they were born in 1940. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo, there is a pretty substantial gap there.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nA pretty substantial gap.....They were born to my mother and their father and they grew up basically without a father because he left the family when they were at a very young age.  My father was married to a different lady when my brother came along in 1943 and his mother was mentally ill and institutionalized.  So, he was never around her from a very young age and was raised by my grandparents mainly with my dad.      \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid they live here too?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah, they all lived here in Little Rock.  My mother was raised by a single mother because her father died in 1922 of the Spanish flu, which is kind of pertinent now-a-days when we are talking about Covid-19; but he was about 37 years-old and died and left a family of four kids and my grandmother to grow up without him.  Subsequently, they were very independent and very....they grew up during the depression and so, both my parents were depressians....not babies; they were actually teenagers during the depression and so they learned to pinch a penny better than anybody in the world.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nIn what part of Little Rock did they live in or y’all live in when you were growing up?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWhen I was growing up, we were....well when I was born, we were in the Oak Forest Area; not too far from UALR which was called Little Rock University back then.  When I was 5 years-old, we moved to the Broadmoor area and I grew up in Braadmoor...kind of on the edge of Broadmoor.  We had a great life there for more than about 10 years because we were surrounded by woods and by Boyle Park.  In 1957 when I was born was the peak of the baby-boom and so, there were a lot of kids my age on this two block long dead-end street.  There were probably 20-30 kids within a year of me.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nI hear in your voice that you just had an....would it be right to call it an “idyllic” childhood?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt was really an idyllic childhood.  I had great friends, great fun, and not a great lot of responsibility. I was fortunate in the fact that I was the fourth kid around in my parents’ lives.... but my siblings, as you can tell, were a good bit older than I was...so, I was an only child of a multiple child household.  So, my parents had lots of experience and were willing to let me take risks that they probably would not have if I was an only child.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n(Laughing)   Do you know how your family, the Knights, came....do you know where they came from?  England, Scotland....or how they ended up in Arkansas?\n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nI know very little of the history of the Knight family and where they came from.  I suppose that it was probably England, but it could be Scotland.  They came from Mississippi as far as I know. There were a lot of people in Mississippi and my grandfather migrated to Texarkana and then, eventually Little Rock and somewhere in there my grandparents met.  My grandmother was born in Conway, Arkansas of a very, very, large family of about 10 kids.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat was the family’s name?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt was Thompson.  My dad says that he was born on Round Mountain.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah, I know Round Mountain.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nMy wife is an Enderlin from Conway.  They were cotton-gin people and South German Lane going to Round Mountain was my wife’s fathers’ land.   His family, the Enderlins, lived out there. Obviously, your parents were in banking...were your extended family in banking too or were they farmers or...?  \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nMy granddad was a carpenter in his later years, but before that he was kind of a dirt farmer or kind of a....what do you call it when they don’t own the land?  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSharecropper...\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nShare cropper, he was kind of a share cropper; but wasn’t too successful at that apparently. My dad was one of five boys and so, they had a lot of mouths to feed.  I know more about the history of my grandmother on my mother’s side because some people have done more genealogy of that end and because of the family lore.  My grandmother was born in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nReally?  \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah; her father left the family at her young age....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nLate 19th Century....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nProbably early 20th...yeah.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah, because your parents were born in the 1920s...\n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah, my grandmother was born in 1892 and so maybe when she was 8 or 9 or between 6 and 8 years old, the father immigrated to the US...we don’t know why... to become a partner in a saw mill out at Bigelow, Arkansas.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah...there in goes the connection again...the Enderlins and the Lipsmyers were big families around Bigelow and St. Boniface Church and all that. So, I’ve spent a few days wondering around in that part of the country.  What are some of your memories of being a small child either in Little Rock, at your grandparent’s house, or with your family?  \n\n Dr. Dan Knight: We had a lot of extended family.  Both sides of the family had a lot of connection here.  My grandparents on my dad’s side were here and, of course, both living.  My mother’s mother died when I was four years old, but her sisters and brother were around...well one of her sisters was around and one was in Tulsa.... and it was a very connected family. My uncles on my dad’s side, a lot of them, had left and moved off to Texas; but they came back all the time because of my grandparents being here and so, I knew my extended family fairly well and had again, there was a lot of kids in my same age group on my dad’s side.  So my cousins over there; we’re still...I wouldn’t say close because of my issues that I will talk about later in moving on...but we still have a texting group that my oldest living cousin does and when I get one text, I know I’ll get fourteen right after that.\n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: \n\n(Laughing)....Yeah....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nSo, I was close to all of them.  On my mother’s side, my cousins were not real close but some of them were fairly close.  I knew them pretty well and my sisters knew them better than I did because they were more their age than my age.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWere there any people in that big extended, both maternal and paternal, family that acted as role models or mentors for you?  Were there any people that you looked up to or that had an impact on you?   Did a grandmother say, “You’d make a fine doctor?”.....Those kinds of things.... \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWell, I had an uncle who was a surgeon in Tyler, Texas.  We weren’t close, but he was a figure that I looked up to.  Probably my biggest emphasis in medicine was my half-sister, Nanette, who was a school teacher and she had determined that she wanted me to be a doctor from the time I was born. \n\n(Laughing)....And she kept pretty pressure on me to be a doctor and I kept rebelling; I tried to do business and I tried to do science, and she kept pushing until finally I figured out, “Well, it’s probably a good fit.” I really wanted to do architecture.  A.) I probably wasn’t talented enough to draw back then, that was before computers, and I didn’t think I was talented enough to draw and B.) I looked at what they made out of school and it wasn’t much money.  \n\n(Both laughing)....\n\nI didn’t want to go through that much school and starve to death; I knew that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhere did you go to elementary school and high school?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI was in elementary school at a private Lutheran School here in Little Rock and went through the sixth grade.  I then switched to public schools, which was a culture shock to say the least, and it was an integrated public school which was not something you saw a lot of in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. The first school I went to was just down the block from my house, that was seventh grade, and it was quite a culture shock.  Some of the teachers were not very good and I was kind of disappointed.  I didn’t know whether I was going to......  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWere the teachers at the Lutheran School good?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nFor the most part, yes....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAs far as you could tell?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYes, as far as I could tell; you know, it was pretty close family.  My family was Lutheran and just kind-of close knit.  There were some instances where I didn’t feel real safe in that junior high school; but then the next year, bussing started in Little Rock and we were bused to Dunbar Junior High School which had been the black high school several years prior to that and it was integrated for the first time ever.  It was a delightful school and I think they purposely put some really good teachers there to make it work.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhere is  Dunbar?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt’s on Wright Avenue; it’s still there and still a functioning school.  It’s a big ole school and looks like Central...a mini Central High School. It was a very charming school even though it didn’t have air conditioning; but neither did any of the other schools that I went to up until high school.  They did some novel things and got people involved; they got students involved in clubs.  I worked in the main office.  I had a good Algebra teacher and not a good English teacher.  So, I some really good teachers there and some good friends; I really enjoyed that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWere you athletic at all?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nNo, I am blind as a bat.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat category of subjects were you most interested in? \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nProbably mostly science; you know, I wasn’t very interested in English, although I had a really good English teachers.  I did do some Latin and I was very good at Latin.  I did French for a while and then, the teacher got to be too _______ and I kind of dropped that. I liked the Latin.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid the Latin mold you for later?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nNo.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou didn’t notice any advantage one way or the other?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWell, I’m very good at English, I’m very good at grammar, and stuff like that...I can imagine....I guess, I memorize the names of medical terms pretty easily; but other than that, I can’t really say that it help a whole lot. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou mentioned Lutheranism; was your family religious?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nExtremely; we went to church every Sunday and when they had services in the middle of the week, we went to church on Wednesday and whatever...if it was Lent...or whatever.  My dad was President of the Congregation; although he grew up Church of Christ.  When he married my mother, he converted to Lutheranism. \n\n(Laughing)...He had not too many good things to say about the Church of Christ, but you know his parents were still...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nI bet that was a cultural shock for him.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nProbably in a good way...yeah, I think it was so enlightening that he liked it a lot better. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo, did you do well in school?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI did very well in school.  I was a national merit scholar in high school.  I was like 12th in the class of 450.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat high school did you go to?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI went to Parkview High School.  We moved my 15th year and I changed school districts, which was a cultural shock too, because in the three years I went to junior high school I had met everybody, knew everybody, and most of the people lived in my neighborhood.  Then, I changed neighborhoods and didn’t know anybody and had to start all over.  I was in a lot of honors classes and met all the doctors and lawyers kids.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid you make a lot of contacts during that period with kids, people...they aren’t kids anymore, who you have maintained contact with over the years?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nNot at all....not at all; in fact, one of my best friends growing up was in that school too as he had moved too.  We palled around for a while and I palled around through college and maybe into med school...but, then he had a family and moved to Conway and we just kind of lost touch. I picked up...one of my neighbors who lived three to four houses down the street, she and I carpooled together in high school and we met when she moved to this neighborhood about six or seven years ago.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nHow long have you lived in this neighborhood?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nAbout twelve years.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAt what point did you start thinking about what you wanted to do when you became an adult?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nOf course in college, I guess.  I wanted to give it some opportunity as I didn’t want to just go into medicine; I thought I might make a mistake and so, I tried a lot of business courses.  Accounting just wasn’t my thing and statistics was ok, but it wasn’t my thing.  I like people and worked in people oriented jobs when I was in high school and college.  I liked dealing with people.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo you worked through high school and college.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh; I started out as a grocery bagger and hated that, which didn’t last too long.  I worked for a pharmacy and liked that.  I worked for a bank as my parents were bankers.  My dad got me a job as a bank teller and I liked that.  I liked the people part of it; I didn’t like the part where people got mad because I wouldn’t give them money.  But, I did like the people part of it most of the time.    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWere you active in music?  You already said that you weren’t big on the arts particularly when you were in school.  Were you active in music at all?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nNo, I’m really not.  I took piano lessons as a child and I didn’t want to sit still and practice; so, I wasn’t very good and after a couple of years, my family...well, my mother...finally relented and let me quit.  So, I’m not musical at all.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat informed your decision....did your family assume that you were going to go to college?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nOh yes....yeah...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nI assumed that....what informed your decision on where you would go to college?  And where did you do to college? \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nThat was a big thing; I had made the National Merit finalist and I got a stack...back then there were no computers ...so, I got a stack of brochures, two bags full this big...from every college in the United States.  I wanted to go off and I kind of settled into Washington University in St. Louis because they came here a lot and I talked to them.  So, I was kind of going to go there and then looked at the tuition and it was like ....“Oh, my gosh....”  My family was not rich, by any means; they made ends met and we never had bill collectors at the door.  We owned our own house; but, my family was not rich. So, that was just...we tried for some scholarships, but didn’t get enough to make ends meet.  Then, I was going to go to Hendrix.  I had registered for Hendrix, been admitted at Hendrix, and then looked at the tuition and room and board and my mother said, “Well, you can commute to Hendrix” and I thought, “Well, if I’m going to do that than there is no point in going to Hendrix.  If I have to drive back and forth to Hendrix everyday”... you know, you wouldn’t get the live in experience.  So then, I was going to go to Fayetteville, the University, and I went up there and was admitted.  I went to orientation and the orientation experience was the experience from Hell.  I thought, “If I’m going to be a doctor or anything else, I will never make it through this school up here.”  There were people throwing up in the halls, getting drunk, and all this kind of stuff and I said, “This is not for me.  I will just go to UALR for a year” and I got a full scholarship to UALR and I lived at home.  So, it was free to go to UALR.              \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nLet me back to one more thing before I forget about it...what year did you graduate from high school?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\n76, we were the Patriots and that was the year of the bicentennial; everything was red, white, and blue there.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhen you went to UARL, did you enjoy it? \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI hated it at first; absolutely hated it and thought I had made a big mistake.  Then I said, “If I’m going to stay here, I need to get involved “......my brother was a Sigma-Nu and so, I went to meet the Sigma-Nu’s and became involved in the Sigma-Nu Fraternity, which is probably the reason I stayed at UALR. I was very involved with the Sigma-Nu and got a lot of life experiences out of that. I got some leadership experiences and some surviving crazy people experiences; there were things that people did that I never had seen before experiences...but I had a connection with people at UALR and stayed there.  I have some connections to some of my buddies at UALR. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid you stay home or did you....?\n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nI lived at home, which was only a few....well, it wasn’t far from UALR.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid you work your way through college?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI worked my way half-way through college and then got into some rally tough courses that took a lot of time and a lot of labs.  I thought, “If I’m going to make enough grade to get into med school, I need to quit this” and so, I went to working just in the summers after that.    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAgain, back to the subject of teachers or mentors...did you have any people who had a big impact on you or turned you in one way or another?...Organic chemistry teacher?...\n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nI don’t think turned my life in one way or another, but I did appreciate great teachers; Dr. Setleiff our organic chemistry teacher, which is funny that you mentioned that.  I started out with another doctor who was Chinese, an organic chemistry teacher, and after about 4-5 weeks I could tell that I wasn’t going to go anywhere in organic chemistry with him because I couldn’t understand what he was saying.  So, I dropped that course, which put a big hole in my schedule, and I put me a little bit behind.  Then, I went to start over with Dr. Setleiff and did two summer courses of organic chemistry and I made top grade in both of those. I just thought his teaching style was excellent.  There were a lot of good teachers at UALR, but I wouldn’t say that anybody was particularly influential necessarily.  My advisor was the head of the biology department and I was a biology major and he was absolutely worthless as an advisor; totally.  You know, I think UALR was a good school, but I think I graduated there despite their help.  They were not extremely great region advisors, it was kind of you survive.....survival of the fittest. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThey didn’t help much and you did it yourself.....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh...Well, I had great teachers and I will say that they did help me too; but as far as the leadership at UALR, it was pretty nonexistent.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAt what point did you start applying to go to medical school?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI applied in my third year, before I had even taken the MCAT....well, I applied right after I had taken the MCAT and I didn’t do very well on it, the first time I took the MCAT; and I had not finished.  So, I didn’t get in the first time I had applied, but I had not even...I was still in the end of my junior year and I think I was taking it too soon and didn’t know what I was doing.  So, I retook the MCAT, did a lot better, finished, and then got accepted.    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid you study for it; actually physically study for the MCAT?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\n The first time, no...not at all...not one bit....the second time, yes, greatly.\n\n(Laughing)...\n\n I took all kinds of books, questions, and everything.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah; by the time you took the MCAT the second time, did they already have these refresher courses that you could take?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nNo, not then...it was just books...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nI think that developed another 5-6 after that.  My wife took those...I think in the mid ‘80s.........and she had been a pharmacist for 12 years. \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWow....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nShe had been a pharmacist for 12 years and said, “I better do something else.” \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh; yeah..\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAnyways, was there any question or were you sweating bullets when you applied the second time for med school?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nExtremely, I was like, “I am not applying a third time; what do I do if I don’t get in?” and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was so joyful when I got in.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid you end up with a degree from UALR?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYes...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo you ended up going four year....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIn fact, there was a gap in there because I.....because of the dropping organic chemistry, I had some hour gaps and so, I finished actually in December of 1980.  My last semester was pretty light because I didn’t need many hours; so from the last year, I was working full-time and by December till I started med school in August, I was working when I was off and graduated. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo you started med school in September of ’81?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo talk about medical school and especially that first two years.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah....yeah, medical school was a culture shock.  You know, I thought I was the hot stuff as I got top grades in college and top grades in high school.  I thought I.....I realized when I immediately started that my study habits were medial.  (Laughing)...If I couldn’t ace a test by studying for two hours...you know, that was crazy; but, I was totally wrong and totally shocked.  I wasn’t the big shot, because everybody there was a big shot and we were all.....some of them had a lot better study habits than I did and some of them were just down and out geniuses.  I remember one girl, she could study the night before and made top grades and was passing top of the class.  She could be number one of the class and not even try; but I had to study and that was a real culture shock.  I think I had a tension headache the entire first year.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n(Laughing)... I went to Arkansas State in the ‘60s and we had an organic chemistry teacher named Sifford and Dr. Sifford on the first day you walked in the course said, “You are subject to a test everyday you walk into class, including tomorrow, and  I will test you anytime over everything that we has studied up to this point.” It was probably one of the most important things in my young life of learning how to study.....and learning how to study effectively and keeping up.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh...keeping up; yeah....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThat was just a really helpful thing for me when I went into medical school; but that was one of those things........were there any courses within that first two years, other than just pulling back your skull and shoveling it in... that you found difficult or more difficult than the others?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWell, I was trying to figure out what courses were what...I think pathology was...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSecond year....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nSecond year.....uh, gross anatomy was always challenging.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah.....\n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nAnd stinky and everything else... \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDo you have fond memories of medical school?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nSome.... (Laughing)....some were some of the worst in the world...I mean, the first two years were horrid.  I made a lot of good friends; I have lifelong friends from that.  Jeff Kirschner is one of my good friends, he and his wife.  I just made some great friends and had some great times despite the angst of it.  The second year was just horrid; it was seven months and they just cram twelve months into seven months and...  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nRight.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt was way too fast...it was a wonder I learned anything, because it was way too fast.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat about the second two years? \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI liked the third year and I loved the fourth year.  The third year, even though there were a lot of hours and I was gone a lot....I was at work a lot...I really liked it because it started becoming meaningful and I felt like I was doing what I would be doing.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah....again, where there any teachers either in the preclinical years or during the clinical years that had an impact on you or pushed you in one direction or another...or did you already have an idea of what you wanted to do when you got through school?  \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWell, there were a lot of good teachers; I thought Robin Jones of pathology was really good.  There were several other people that....but, I didn’t have direct contact with any of the teachers necessarily.  I wanted to be a generalist and study; not necessarily a specialist. I thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist when I first started and my first rotation my junior year was psychiatry at the state hospital. After the second week, I decided, “No, I don’t want to be a psychiatrist” and that was the end of that.  (Laughing)....So, I didn’t have any idea of what I wanted to be, but I knew I liked a lot of stuff and I didn’t like some stuff...so, I just thought I wanted to be a generalist.  I was going to be an internal medicine doctor; that was my plan.  I did a lot of internal medicine rotations and I did some clinic with internal medicine in my senior year and up until the very end when I had to choose, I really was going to do internal medicine...but, I had not the greatest experiences with some of the internal medicine physicians in the clinic; in fact, one of them I had an out and out knock down drag out with over some personal issues with a death in the family.  I just thought that was totally inappropriate and not a good role model.  I guess maybe that soured me on my choice; I don’t know, but I also didn’t necessarily want to be in the hospital all the time.  I also went and did a half rotation at  Shirley Family Medical Center my senior year and saw some docs there that I liked him good enough and then, the whole clinic kind of almost imploded my second week there and I ended up not....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWho all was there at that time?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nRoland Anderson and Steve Stroud....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nOk....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nSteve Stroud was leaving and that was one of the things that imploded. Kirk Riley, Mark Peterson...no, Mark Peterson wasn’t there then...Kevin Bay was there....it was a fine rotation, but I think it was either...I think Roland announced that he was leaving at that time and so, they didn’t think that they could handle a student at that time.  So after two weeks, I just lost my rotation and had to do something; I ended up at the department, which was down.....the Department of Family Medicine which was down by the Children’s Hospital and old Baptist Hospital.  I went to work there and met Arlo Khan, Ken Davidson, Ron Brinberry, and Jamie Howard and I thought they were the greatest bunch of people in the world and so, I decided that I was going to be a family doctor.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou couldn’t find an any more laid back group of people....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nThey were laid back in certain ways...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nThey were not laid back in their medical care. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah.....Right, I didn’t mean anything negative.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nThey were pretty intense actually.  I mean like Gary Wood was very intense with his OB and Jamie took her OB very seriously. Arlo, even though he seems laid back, is not laid back. (Laughing)...he is probably my biggest mentor in life.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhen was this....your senior year?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\n1983, ’84, and ’85.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo, did that seal it for you?  Were you going to try to do.....you said you had an unsatisfactory experience of internal medicine and a really satisfactory response with family practice......\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh; yeah, I decided to go ahead and do family medicine at that time.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWas there a question of whether you would be at the University, or whether you would go to one of the AHEC programs, or some other family practice program out of the state?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah, well because of my personal relationship, I wanted to stay here in Little Rock.  But you know, in the match....I don’t know if you know anything about the match, you probably do....but, you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. So, I interviewed all over the place.  I interviewed in Fayetteville, I interviewed in Pine Bluff, I interviewed in Tulsa, Dallas; a lot of different places.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nIn your interviewing process, did you have any exposure to Lee Parker?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nHe interviewed me in Fayetteville; yeah.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nMark Atwood or Kirk Watson?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nMark Atwood is closer to my age; so, he .....  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nKirk Watson would’ve been a little bit....he was one of my partners in Benton and he came to our clinic...he had taught for several years in Pine Bluff.  What about Joe Stallings; did you go out and talk with him?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nNo, I didn’t talk to Joe; I just didn’t want to go to Jonesboro.  I know Joe very well, but I didn’t know him at the time.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nI’m going back to medical school for a little bit; what are your fondest memories or medical school and your worst memories of medical school?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nEmmmm.....my fondest memories of medical school was just the group of people that I was with, the other students.  We just had good times; a couple of my friends, we’d go camping, and canoeing, this, that, and the other....I just had a really good time there.  The worst things were, like I said, my sophomore year and just go, go, go, and cram it all in and not feeling like I was nailing it all down and moving on.    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWere there any crises during this period of time?  Physical, emotional, family....you mentioned a death in the family...\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah...no, my uncle died during my senior year; I wasn’t particularly close to him, but close enough.  I was supposed to go to the funeral and this internal medicine doc said, “Well, why didn’t you tell us?” and I said, “Well, it was Saturday when he died.”  He said, “Well, why didn’t you call?” and I said, “You didn’t give me your phone number.”  He really didn’t want me to go to the funeral and I said, “Well, I’ll go to the funeral in the morning and be back here in the afternoon” and I did and didn’t speak to him for two days until he finally apologized. That wasn’t the worst experience, but that was…\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n Just kind of one of those off putting things....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah from somebody who was supposed to be taking care of people...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah...Did you end up with a good bit of debt after medical school?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI thought it was a good bit of debt, it was about less than $18,000.  Yeah, I lived pretty frugally.  I had an old car, a really old car, and...yeah, I lived pretty frugally.  I lived on my own, but my parents helped me a little bit; they didn’t help me a lot, but they did give me like $500 a month to live on and I borrowed loans for the rest. Our tuition was pretty cheap; I think, it was like $2,000 a year.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo, you were accepted into residency and entered the residency here at the Medical Center; did it turn out to be what you expected it to be?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI wasn’t...well to be honest when I first went in, I wasn’t real crazy about staying here.  But because I was in a relationship and needed to stay here...they said bad things about the residency, but I had a really good time.  The first year was horrid...a horrid, horrid year.  But because of the way it was set up, you change rotation every month or two months and you went to different specialties....the hours were long, there were no duty hour regulations, and you would go in....I would join OBGYN and the OBGYN residents who had been there 4-5 months, they knew the first years and I knew nothing. So, I’d have to build up my knowledge and by the time I got through with that, I’d have to go to pediatrics and start all over.  The pediatricians had been there a long time, I’d feel like an idiot...get comfortable with it and then, go to surgery at the VA or somewhere else....it was like that all year.  The hours were horrid, the call schedule was horrid, I had no break, and then in March of that year, I went home after not having seen my parents in two months and my dad told me that my mother had a spot on her lung.  She was a smoker and I had been through the VA and seen spots on lungs and all of that and so, I knew instantly with that meant.  She had cancer, went through surgery that month, and started chemo and radiation, and she died by the next year.     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWere you very close?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nVery close....yeah and so, I just struggled to put one foot in front of the other at that point in time; not very motivated and was thinking maybe I made a mistake in going into family medicine.  But then the second year, things lightened up some and I felt like I knew what I was doing, which I see that a lot in having trained a lot of residents.  The first year is horrid for them and then by the third of the way through the second year, they start to gel and feel like they’re alright.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWere any of the teachers in family medicine that particularly stood out to you as being helpful or harmful?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah, Arlo Khan was always my mentor and helped a lot.  John Overton was a very stand up guy and I enjoyed working with him. Ron Brinberry was really helpful; I think they were all helpful.  There was one family doc, who I won’t name, who gave me a bad evaluation on my rotation in March when my mother was diagnosed with cancer.  He said that I didn’t seem to be engaged; did he ever ask me “why I wasn’t engaged?”....no and he prided himself on getting to know his patients.  But, he gave me a bad evaluation and I thought that was very unfair.  I was struggling and it was amazing that I made it to work every day.  I was struggling horribly and nobody ever asked me....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAt that point in time, did y’all do all your rotations within the med Center itself?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nNo...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWere they still doing Baptist and/or St. Vincent’s and the VA?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nNo...the VA, Children’s, and the Med Center.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nOk.....of the things that you did as a resident, what did you enjoy the most?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh.....hmmm, good question; I enjoyed getting to know patients and taking care of patients.  Just getting to know my patients....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid you prefer Inpatient or outpatient?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI liked them both.  I like the quick turnaround of the inpatient; working them up, getting quick answers, and moving on.....you really get to know your patients a lot, as you know, when they’re inpatient.  You get to know their families and all that kind of stuff, but, you also get tied down with their social issues and that can be real tedious at times...especially if you are working in a lower socioeconomic class patient population and some of them are just...you know, it makes you feel bad because you can’ do anything about it. Outpatient, I’m more of an outpatientist at this point in my life; but, I’ve done both.  I’ve liked a lot of stuff I have done.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nObviously your career has revolved around medical education; right?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh, right.....Not always, no....in fact, the first half of my career was not at all.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nOk, talk about that; that’s where I was headed, because I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea. \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUm, there is a transition period here and so, I have to kind of backtrack and then, start all over.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSure; absolutely, it’s your interview.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI was in residency and enjoyed it a great deal; but the last two years...in fact...the last year I was in residency, I thought, “I really liked academics.”  But everybody always said our faculty was inbred; in other words, they came from the residency program and so....  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAbout what year would that be?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\n87-88 and so, I knew that that wasn’t an option for me to stay here and I needed to stay here because of my partner.  I’m gay and it had become known in the community that I was gay and I had a hard time finding a job.  I interviewed with three very large dominant practices in the Little Rock/North Little Rock area and all three of them rejected me even though I had moonlighted with two of them.  Then, they hired my fellow resident in the same year and so, it became quite obvious that I was not getting a job from them for one reason; being gay.  Then a private practitioner, a sole practitioner, offered me a position in private practice and I won’t say his name because after a year, it didn’t work out for various reasons. A nice, good person...he did treat his patients greatly, but we didn’t see eye to eye on the practice and so, I left after a year and joined two of my med school classmates for the next two years at the Missouri Pacific Health Association; the railroad.  The railroad didn’t exist; it had died already, but the health association continued.  They used to have a hospital down on Cantrell Road. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah, I remember that.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nBut, that’s not where we were; we were in Sherwood.  They had become enlightened and knew that they wanted to move people outpatient and so, they opened a clinic out on 107 in Sherwood. I went to work with Jeff Khersner and Kathy Thomas at that time and we had a great time; unfortunately, the boss that hired me got arrested and jailed for embezzlement after about a month I was there. So, we got a new boss and a new clinic manager and after two years it was obvious that this was not going to be a long term thing. So, all three of us left within two weeks of each other.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWow... (Laughing)...\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI suddenly got thrown into being an ER doctor at one of the busiest ERs in the state having not really ever done ER other than in residency.  I had not moonlighted in the ER since and then, I suddenly become and ER doc along with Jeff Khersner, my good friend.”  So, I was an ER doc for five years; full time.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid you like that?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nThe first two years, I loved it.  The third year was kind of ehhh and the last two years, I was just burned out and didn’t want to do it anymore.  Then, I went back into private practice, but I wanted to go into academics at that time and talked to the department and they had rehired another person who had been there. So, I didn’t get that job and went back into private practice at Sherwood Family Medical Center for three years.  At that time, the job that I wanted came back open and so, I reapplied for it and got the job.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThat would’ve been when?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIn ’99....Jeff Goldsmith hired me and they were having things.....after he hired me, I found out all kinds of things the department was having trouble with; finances, leadership, the residency...he had made me the residency program director and I had no clue what I was doing. It was one of those jobs that I should not have taken that job if I knew what I was doing; but, I did.  I came in and the accreditation body came in three weeks after I got there and to make a long story short, they put the residency on probation.  So, I had been there for four months and my residency was on probation; I thought, “Well if I lose this job, I guess I’ll have to go back out in an ER somewhere.”  But, we worked very hard and I had good partners and we made it work; we got full accreditation.  I took us three years to get full accreditation.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou don’t have to answer this question if you don’t want to....what you ran into, I believe and I was in the very first class; I was in the second class of residency in 1972...and in my reading and looking, what I know about it, and from people I interviewed...there was one crises after another for about 25 years.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nCan you identify what most of the problems were?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nLack of leadership; giving the wrong people the wrong jobs...I won’t elaborate.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou don’t have to; that is kind of what I hear other people say.  The same kind of thing.... variable leadership; sometimes good sometimes bad...but, variable leadership....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nAnd it’s not just the top leader, but the lower line too.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSo, you went to work for the residency program...by this time, you are out of school how long?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\n11 years...out of residency 11 years.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDid things stabilize?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah, they did; we had a really good residency and I think it is still a really good residency.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWho were the people that occupied the positions around you and what position did you have there?       \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI was the residency program director from 1999 until 2010 and then, a couple of times after that; it’s a long story.  Pat Avanade was my assistant residency director and she has a Masters in health education.  She is a brilliant lady and she helped me get through this period; we learned together what the rules and regulations were and how to fulfill that.  Then, I had really good faculty who had been there for many years: David Nelson, Jamie Howard, Arlo Khan, Ken Davidson was there for a little while and left shortly thereafter.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nHow many residents were in the residency program at that time?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWhen I got there, it was 7 per year; so there were 21 and we backed it down to 6 per year while I was there, which is what it still is right now.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhy did you back it down?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nDr. Goldsmith wanted to decrease the size of the residency thinking we would just get really good residents at that point.  He wanted to take it down even further, but I wouldn’t let him because we needed the manpower; you can’t run a residency with four residents per year and not work people to death....you just can’t do it.  I think if you just work a good residency....there are a lot of residents out there, you just have to work to get the good residents; which we did.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou were there in that position from ’99 until 2010; did you overall enjoy that position?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI did overall; it got...after a few...you know, it was real challenging and I wanted a challenge at that time in my life.  It was very challenging and I learned a lot.  I was involved in national organizations....the Association for Family Medicine Residency Directors and the Society for Teachers of Family Medicine; I got to know a lot of people nationally.  It was just a good change that I needed in my life and I really enjoyed it.  After about 8-9 years, it got a little tedious; you know, you have residents with problems, clinics having problems, people not showing up, and all that kind of stuff.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAbout this time was when Keystone III....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\n2003...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah...the Future of Family Medicine in 2002, I think, and they published several papers from 2002 on through to 2014 .....did those meeting of minds have any impact?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI would like to say yes, but I have been in family medicine long enough that I have seen things come and go.  Prior to me coming back to the academics; actually the years that I was merged in medicine is when this happened mainly...when I left the residency and I first started this first practice, they had me fill out forms for the HMOs and I said, “What’s an HMO? I haven’t been told that in residency.” So, I saw the HMOs come and family medicine become gate keepers; everybody started migrating to family medicine and we were going to be the very top....we’ll, I saw all that fall apart while I was still in the ER and before I got back into academics.  By the time I got back in academics, the interest of students going into family medicine was falling like a rock; it was just going straight down and we were having trouble recruiting.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhy?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nBecause there was a big backlash against family medicine at that point by patients ....they thought the family doctors were keeping them from going to specialists; that was what the specialists were telling them.  They didn’t want to go to a family doctor; they wanted to go to a specialist and they thought the family doctors were doing this because of their own pocketbooks.  It was a bad backlash...it was backlashed to the students.  You know, all the specialties run the hospitals at the academic medical centers and they were telling students lies about family medicine and kind of discouraging everybody from going into family medicine...and they do to this day.    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThey have since 1947....\n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah...exactly...but the prevailing winds were that family medicine was not hot after 2000 and that’s why it keeps re-happening... \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI think some good ideas came out of that....but what needed to happen, didn’t happen and to this day, hasn’t happened. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nBut that is the timeframe because Keystone was 99-2000, I think; wasn’t it?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt was 2003.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThat was all happening; what about the patient’s center home? \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nThat was further on...that was way on, further on....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nOK...\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI made my _______ or a chair at that point; so.....we’d have to jump forward about 10 years...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nI want to come back to that....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWhy?\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWell, I considered in writing this book on stopping in 2000 as history; because as you well know, there are so many things between 2000 and 2022 that nobody knows where it is going ultimately.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nRight....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThis is a good point to start talking about......Let’s just go on and go through your progression and then, we will go back and talk about family practice in general.  You were the residency director in 2010....what happened in 2010?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt was actually what happened in 2008....In 2008, Jeffrey Goldsmith unfortunately got run over by a car; he was hit by a car and knocked flat while walking across a parking lot.  He ended up having a traumatic brain injury along with all his other injuries; the other injuries healed, but the traumatic brain injury didn’t totally heal. So, I became active chair in 2008. I was driving through Missouri on my way back from a conference when they called me and told me about his accident.  When I got back, I had to take over the department as he had brain rattle like crazy.  He spent the next year rehabbing; he went through rehab in Seattle for like 6-8 months and then when it came to the end, he couldn’t think fast enough to become a practicing physician again and the chair asked him to step down at that time.  So, she asked me if I wanted to take the position of chair fulltime, I had been active chair for a year, and I said, “Yes.”  So July 1, 2009, I became fulltime chair and I was still residency program director too for a year until I hired somebody else.  I was doing two jobs at that point in time....but at that time, I became full time chair of the department until 2020.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThat was 2009 until 2020...and at some point in the process, you moved over to the new center over in North Little Rock...\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nThat was in 2020.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat prompted that move?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh.....things weren’t going the way I wanted them to at UAMS and I stepped down as chair.  Julie Garner asked me to come work with them and I had helped build that residency.  As chair, I was ....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nShe’s attracted a bunch of people; hasn’t she?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWell, I attracted her.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nOh yeah....ok, good....\n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nI was the one who hired her and then, she hired me; I was her boss and now, she’s my boss.\n\n(Laughing)...But, there were a lot of changes at UAMS that I was not happy with and the Dean and I were not agreeing on things and so.....I stepped down.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDr. Cleveland is over there as well, right?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nHe is...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAnd y’all are working with Les, down at Lonoke, and his program......how is that going?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh....uh huh....well, it would be going better, but Baptist made some decisions that they want the program to be under rural auspices and so, we haven’t been able to move as fast as we wanted to because of that.  I mean the practice is going well; we just haven’t been able to fully facilitate the practice to where we want it to be because of the changes in...I wouldn’t say ownership, but some of the rules and regulations.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nI interviewed Les.....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nOh, he’s a great guy.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nOh a wonderful guy....Les is just got the moral authority of a mother.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah, definitely....he owns everybody in that community. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n(Laughing)....He really does; he can make things happen or not make things happen in that community.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh....yeah, he really has....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nLet’s spend a little while talking about the challenges to family physicians ...whether its students or you, as a practitioner...for the last 15-20 years and where are we going from here? Clearly, the nurse practitioners have gotten themselves to the point where they can act as independent practitioners; the osteopaths are graduating a large number of residents, both in Fort Smith and in Jonesboro....  \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat impact is that having on you as a family medicine educator and/or practitioner?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh...hmm; wow, that is a big one......I think the biggest hurdle right now for family medicine is the fact that other specialists don’t respect us as much as they should and as a result, they have gone to Congress and limited our income.  I think family medicine doctors make fine income, but I think some specialists make extreme income; especially certain ones.  I mean, you know, I think a neurosurgeon should make extreme income or maybe an orthopedic surgeon facing joints every day; they should get paid extreme income.  I don’t think other specialties necessarily who work 9-5 jobs should make extreme income just because they do a lot of procedures.  I think family medicine has  payment issues and a respect issue that both are going to be very difficult to overcome. Because of that, the cream of the crop graduating medical school are not going into family medicine right now and.....I mean, there are some that are and I’m sure that there are people who....we have gotten really good graduates, but we should be getting more graduates going tin to family medicine.  We got 19 this year; 21 if you count the two that went into the military match. So, we had 21 people out of 170 who went into family medicine this year; that’s not enough....not nearly enough. We are backfilling with international graduates, there is nothing wrong with international graduates, but we should be filling with US graduates for the most part; that’s what should be filling it.....because they know the communities, they know the society, they know the milieus of people that they are dealing with....where somebody from another country has to work really hard to get caught up.  They come in and they do a great job; I’m not faulting them, I’m thanking God that we’ve got them....but, we should have more allopathic and osteopathic graduates going into family medicine.  It’s just not seen right now as the most appealing position.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nHow many of the osteopathic physicians are y’all placing in your residency?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWe’ve got three this year out of our 12.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAre you happy with the residents and their level of knowledge? \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah....yeah, they are just as good.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI mean, if they were at the bottom of the osteopathic class and they didn’t do well....then, we are probably not going to take them....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nRight....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nBut the ones that did fine, they are finely trained and will make just as good a doctor as me and everybody else.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThere has been since the 1970s an uneasy alliance between mainly nurse practitioners, to some extent physician assistants, and family doctors....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThere are a significant number of family physicians out in the state who will tell you that they can’t survive unless they have them.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh; right....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAnd within the academy, there has always been...”Well, in this residency we don’t want to give them too much leeway.”  Where do you come down on that issue? \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nThat is a hard issue and I have thought about this a lot because I have been out to the legislature and testified about this ...I have worked with a lot of nurse practitioners; I have worked with some really good ones and I have worked with some not so good ones.  They are not family physicians; no matter how long they have been in practice, they are not family physicians.  They are not as well retained as family physicians, but I do think they really help family physicians.  I think a lot of family physicians have allocated their responsibility in supervising and training these people; I think they throw them out there and expect them to practice on their own.  They do and they don’t supervise them well, they are taking money from them to supervise them, and they are not supervising; it’s a shame.  I think that it is a travesty.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhere are we going with this issue?\n\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI think that nurse practitioners are going to do more and more outpatient stuff for family medicine.  A lot of nurse practitioners, we hired several at the Med Center in the department, and I know of one in particular that was excellent and I would trust anybody in my family to her...but, we had several who just got overwhelmed and had to quit.  We had several that were good nurse practitioners, but they could go somewhere else that was a lot easier and they’d get paid more than in family medicine; so, I don’t think that they will take over family medicine.  I think we have also advocated a lot of our responsibility by not going to the hospital; its owner should go to the hospital once or twice a day everyday and getting calls all night from the hospital.  But I think when we stepped out of the hospital, we lost a lot of our stance and other things too...I never did OB, but some people did OB; I think fewer people are doing OB....and doing surgery, and doing this, and doing that...and procedures.  I think a lot of people have turned it into an 8-5 job and I think that’s sad.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah; what about the corporatization of medicine....clearly the ARcare, East Arkansas Family Health, Baptist, St. Vincent’s, Baptist out of Memphis and Northeast Arkansas, St. Barnarnds...what do you see as the upside to all that and then, the downside to all that?  \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI think the upside is that it makes your income much more stable and it also takes a lot of your administrative responsibility away from you, which nobody really....I mean, a lot of people didn’t enjoy doing. It also gave you a lot more family time and a lot more stability of your life. You could actually take a vacation and get paid to take a vacation, which everybody needs to do even if you don’t do anything. The bad-side is that if they decide to do something...I was fortunately never...I never employed myself as far as other than being an ER physician...I never employed myself and supported a practice, so I really don’t know what that would be like; although I have a pretty good idea since I was chair and ran the practice too. But, I have heard of instances where they made corporate decisions that were very awful and people lost their practices and livelihoods; I don’t think that happens a lot, but it can happen.  I think that some people lose their drive and responsibility to the practice if they are not the owner; maybe they would stay longer in ones position if they were the owner...I don’t know.    \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat is your position at the residency over in North Little Rock?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI am the associate residency director.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nIs that what you want to be doing?\n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah...yeah, I gave Julie my boundaries and she said, “Ok.\n\n(Laughing)....They were very strict boundaries: I wasn’t going to work full-time and I wasn’t going to take any responsibility for anything that I didn’t want to take responsibility for...and it’s worked out.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAnd you have been doing that for almost two years now?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDo you think that you will keep doing that as is?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUntil I fully retire; yeah.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou were born in ’57...\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI’m 64 now....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n64...have you started even thinking about retiring?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nEveryday.. (Both laughing)...Some days more than others...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nIf you retire, what are you going to do?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nThat’s a good question...travel would be at the top of the list and other than that, I’m not sure.  We have a lake house and I would spend more time there.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n Where is your lake house? \n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nOn Greers Ferry Lake in Shirley, Arkansas.... \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAre you in any way, form, or fashion friends with Ricky Medlock?\n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh, yeah.....he has a lake house just around the corner...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nRickey is a good friend of ours.... \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah…oh really, good…he is a great guy; he and Scott are great guys.  Unfortunately, I have kind of lost touch with Ricky as his life and mine just don’t meet.  By lake we are just 10 minutes away, but by car 45….so, we don’t get together anymore.  We used to all live downtown together for a while and we got together a lot more when we lived downtown.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nSeveral years ago, I was doing some writing and interviewing for a magazine called, “Maturity in Arkansas” and I wrote a piece about collectors: people who collected ink pens, people who collected baskets, and mostly people who were older ...I interviewed Ricky about his art collections.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nOh, fabulous art collection...yes.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n (Laughing)...When you can change out your art three times a year....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh....yeah....have to, because you have it all stored.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n(Laughing)...That’s right... \n\nSo if you were going to have done things differently, how would you have done things different?  Either in the practice of medicine or with your life.....you talked at one point about, “I might want to move somewhere else and not live here the rest of my life.”\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah...I mean everything turned out the way it was supposed to be and that’s just the way it is.  I would probably have gone off to college somewhere else at a big university; that would’ve probably been one decision I would’ve made.  If I could have, I would’ve gone off to a different state for residency; it’s just that life didn’t work out that way.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nAgain, I can remove this question out of here...if you don’t want to answer this, you can just say, “Next question”...what would you have to say to a young physician who is gay and wanted to go into a broad generalist practice in Arkansas?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nLeave Arkansas as fast as you can.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\n...Ok; alright, it’s not the atmosphere you would want to live in.....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nLittle Rock is fine, my neighborhood is fine, my friends are fine; the political climate in this state is horrid for gay people...horrid.  The legislature is out of control and they are doing everything they can to help themselves by hurting the LGBT custom.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nIn 50 years, you’re going to be a picture on the wall and your great, great, great nephews or whoever are going to be looking at your picture; what do you want them to know about you?  \n\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh; that’s a good question....1) I was very committed to helping people and I went into family medicine because I wanted to help people and not to make a lot of money.  Obviously, you don’t make a lot of money.  I was fortunate being Chair; I made decent money...but, that is not why I went into family medicine.  I want people to know that I tried to make it better for LGBT people in medicine, for the  patents and people practicing medicine; I have written several articles in that area in the American Family Physician that have become keynote articles for education involving the LGBT Plus sub-committee at UAMS trying to make it better for employees and physicians at UAMS. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDo you get a lot of resistance there?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nNo, not at all....not at all.  Ken Patterson is holy supportive; holy.  In fact, he gets frustrated because of the things that go on towards the LGBT people in the state.        \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nNot just for LGBT kids and the adults out there necessarily, but for anybody...anybody young going into medicine, what do you wish for them? \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI wish for them to be happy; happy in their life and happy in their family.  I wish they have a good position and able to support and feel their families.  I wish that it’s not two owners for them; I think there is a lot about family medicine that has become extremely ownerless.  It’s not just family medicine, but all medicine.  I think family medicine gets the brunt of it; the gatekeeper rule I mentioned before, the paperwork, pre-authorizations, trying to get recourses for people...one thing is is that I think the insurance companies...Medicaid and Medicare included...do everything that they can to foil care instead of help care.  One example of that are their pharmaceutical formularies, they hide them in the deepest drawer they can find and you have to go through 14 different menus before you find out what is on their formulary.  You send the patient to the pharmacy with the best diabetic drug for them and they reject it and don’t tell you why or what the alternatives are; then, you have to spend another 30 minutes trying to find the alternatives are for the patient to get the SGO2 drug.  I think that out whole system is so convoluted right now and just a horrid system to work in; not just for family doctors, but most docs.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nTalk about electronic medical records; the upside and downside.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah, I have seen those some on the road too.  When they first started, they were kind of mild and kind of a nice working relationship with them; then, they were built as billing systems and not care systems....therefore they work well for billing systems and not for caring systems.  They are convoluted and don’t make sense; it’s not like you can pick up your Iphone or Samsung phone and it’s intuitive and you can figure it out.  They’re not intuitive; you just have to learn it and it doesn’t make sense.  You can’t even use half of the availability of it because it would take you too long to figure it out. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nHow much dry labing is done with electronic medical records?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: What do you mean, dry labbing?\n\n \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nJust writing things down to fill out the record....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nOh...tons; but, that’s not the electronic medical records fault necessarily...that’s the billing practices of Medicare that brought that on and I’m hoping that that is going to change; but, I’m not seeing that.  Medicare says that you have to do the “Review of Systems”...which is mostly worthless...the physical and the family and all this kind of stuff....which medical records makes it easy to do because you just cut and paste.  Although people cut and paste and they paste the same thing...especially the hospital; the next day, I can’t figure out what day it came from...or they didn’t do it; they pasted it and said that they did it. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nIt’s like reading nurses notes from 11-7 back in the ‘80s..... (Laughing)....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nRight; yeah, heart-rate 80.  Always 80....everybody’s heart rate is 80.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nCan you foresee any significant problems for family physicians that we have not eluted to already?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nOne thing is...the number of senior students in medicine and graduates in medicine, the US grads number drops every year. The number of slots opened goes up every year and the absolute number of students who go into family medicine across the country drops every year and I think that is a bad thing.  We need more people to go into family medicine from the US.  I don’t know how we will overcome that other than, like I said, make changes in the way...I think the practice is so onerous right now that people don’t want to go into it; 15-20 minute visits for people with3-5 problems is ridiculous.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah, it’s hard....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt’s hard and warring and you don’t feel like you make a dent in the patient’s life because you don’t have time to teach them or have time to tease out everything that you need to find out about them; I think it’s just horrible.  \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat is the future of telemedicine; Zoom visits and those kinds of things? Let’s say over the next 5 years....do you think that Covid has opened a door?   Obviously, it was open before Covid....but has it made it probable that we will be doing a whole lot more than we have been doing? \n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nI have been very involved in this because I was still at UAMS when Covid started happening and prior to that, telemedicine was maybe just a quarter of an inch open and you could see a slit of light.  By April of that year, we threw the door open and flooded it with telemedicine. We had a lot of problems with it at first because people couldn’t make their screens work, but it morphed and we had to do it for a year and it was a great save of.....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nIs it better now than it was back then?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt’s better.  You know, our patient population that I’m working with now is very unprivileged; they all have Iphones, but they don’t quite know how to work them sometimes... \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nI know.... (Laughing)\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah or they are older and they haven’t been used to it...connecting is the problem sometimes. But we opened the door, everybody rushed in, and we lived on it; especially at UAMS...not so much at Baptist.  But, it’s a good tool.  I think it’s a really good tool for psychiatrists and psychologists; the patients don’t love it.  Some of them like it because they are real busy and people who don’t like to go to the doctors a lot love it; but, not everybody loves it.  I think it’s going to be a good tool in the long term..... I don’t think it’s going to be able to end all.  The patients still like to be patted on the back and they still don’t think you’ve listened to them unless you’ve heard their heart and lungs or verified that the mole on their face is just a seborrheic keratosis and not a skin cancer; you can’t quite do that.  I tried that when some guy was showing me by video on his be-hind...this thing and I said, “That doesn’t look good”...well, he came in and it was fine; but, you couldn’t tell by video. \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYou may already know about this, but I have done some work on looking at the history of telemedicine in Arkansas...before Charles Mabry....in the early ‘90s at Birch Tree Community.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nCharles Mabry bought one of my houses one time.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nBefore Charles, Tucker Steinmetz with the Birch Tree Community for the seriously mental ill patients...when T-1 lines first became available, it established psychiatric evaluations by psychiatrists sitting in a clinic in Benton, Little Rock, or Hot Springs all over the state; it was very interesting work.  I was on the board at that point in time and it was very interesting.      \n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nYou had mentioned patients in a medical home and I want to get back to that at one point....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYes, sir....\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWhen I became Chair in 2009, my administrator of the department was Paula White, she was a very wise woman...is a wise woman...and she had realized that patients in a medical home was going to be a big thing and she talked me into us seeing patients in a medical home; I learned a lot about it with her help and some other people’s help and we became the first patient center medical home, NCQA certified in the state, in our clinic.  I thought it was a very good thing and Medicare started their CPC/PC+ and started using patients in a medical home as part of it; Blue Cross Blue Shield did too and we use it to our advantage and got a lot of payments for that.  With extra payments, we were able to hire care managers, pharmacists, dieticians, and stuff and I thought practice really improved at that point.  Then, they’ve gone into other indurations of it and I think it’s kind of gotten lost....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nFor somebody who is not familiar with this subject, explain a little bit about what the patient...how it evolved; I know the pediatricians started it back in the ‘60‘s and ‘70s...explain a little bit about what it really means. \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah, well what it is supposed to really mean is that the patient has a medical home, or place, that they come to and get all their basic medical care; kind of like going to Walgreens to get all your pharmaceuticals, all your milk and dairy products, and everything else.  You come to your patient center medical home and you have your team that works with you; not just your doctor, but an entire team....pharmacy to help with all our pharmaceutical needs to make sure there are not any reactions and you’re on the right ones...a psychologist, which we did, who works on staff to make sure that your mental health issues are covered....dieticians for diabetics to spend an hour with you several times a year going through what you’re eating and what you should be eating....all this kind of stuff and put it all together and then make sure that you come in yearly for all your maintenance issues such as colonoscopies, mammograms, and that everything is up to date and your getting comprehensive care; like you do with your car every year when it says, “I need to go in for an oil change or a checkup.  You do that every year with your family doctor and the family doctor runs the team; he doesn’t necessarily have to be involved in every bit of the team. It has group visits, telemedicine visits, and all of this involved in the same practice.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nBack about 10-11 years ago, Carla at the Academy got a grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield to the tune of about $150,000 and financed the development of a patient center medical homes in about three different practices across the state.  I don’t have those names now, but do you know anything of what came of that? \n\n Dr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh...yes, there was a lot that came....I was intimately involved in that.  I was intimately involved in all of the patient medical home projects; I was on the Medicaid advisory committee, the Blue Cross primary care advisory committee, and all that....so, I was intimately involved with the academy.  I think I was President during that time, but what happened was...they were going to have our care managers for people in different practices...most practices couldn’t hire their own care managers because they didn’t have a big enough practice and didn’t have enough income.  It was all Medicare/Medicaid and if you had a lot of private paid patients, they didn’t necessarily get paid for that...for patients in a medical home from other companies.  Blue Cross was involved, but Cigna and all them were not necessarily involved; so, they didn’t have enough......so, they had a company that was going to come in and provide these services for the practices; well, that didn’t work out too well for some reason.  I don’t know why, but people with practices just didn’t seem to want to get involved in it.  It wasn’t enough to get you over the hump to make it worthwhile.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDo you think there will be another iteration of this down the road...?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nAlways...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThat might fulfill the promise?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nI don’t know; I think we are going to have to have some major upheaval.  The way that we are going now and of course....you know, Medicare leads everything and right now as you know, Congress can’t agree that the sky being blue and will not agree on any major changes.  It’s amazing that Obama Care is still existing and I think it’s a great thing, especially for Arkansas.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah...\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt’s a fabulous thing; that’s the biggest change we’ve had in my lifetime other than Medicare when I was 6 years old.  That is the biggest thing, because so many people have healthcare that weren’t getting healthcare and we about drowned in healthcare when it came up.  So many people came in who hadn’t been seen in 10 years and it was like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to go to the hospital immediately”...they’re in total heart failure, they’re diabetes is way out of control, or they’re in kidney failure.  We just found all these people who were in failure of everything and it took us two years to sort through those people and get them stabilized and on medicine that they could actually afford and that was just a miracle for Arkansas.   \n\n Dr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWhat are your thoughts about single payer?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nDone right, it could be good.  Done the way Medicare does everything else, not so much.\n\n(Laughing)...\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nMore regulation is not necessarily the answer; good leadership is the answer and I don’t think we have that.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah...R. B. Robbins in 1948 when they were fighting, the American Academy of general Practice and the AMA were fighting the national health insurances, he said that the family doctor is the quarterback of the healthcare team....I suspect that if he had rewritten that in the ‘80s or early ‘90s, he would’ve said, “the family doctor is the quarterback, but somebody else is on the sideline calling the plays.” \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYep....\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nI believe that’s kind of what you’re saying.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nYeah....yeah, right...\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWould you do all this again; what you have done with your life up to this point?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nOh gosh; I’ve seen surveys that asked that question and I don’t know.  I don’t know; medicine has changed me as a person.  I think I’d been a totally different person if I hadn’t gone into medicine.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nIn what way...?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh, I’ve become much more aware of the world.  I would’ve been an very _____ person if I had been an architect, a banker, or something like that.  I would not have known people well.  I think I can size people up pretty fast and usually I’m right; I’ve enjoyed that.  I’ve enjoyed being called doctor, the esteem; it’s not why I went into it, but I’ve enjoy that.  I think I would’ve been some kind of a doctor; maybe not a family doctor, because it’s a tough life...it’s a tough life.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDo you have anything else that you would like to throw into this conversation?   When we started this conversation, we said that we would start with the things that are deepest down in the family and where the family came from and stuff...and then talk about the things that are present today...is there anything else that when you look out on the horizon...I’ll give you an example.. .Sammy Peoples from Nashville, a family doctor my age recently retired, said, “I don’t think our society, the way its structured right now, can afford.....he thought nurse practitioners and physician assistants will probably be the new country doctor because society will look at it and say they can’t necessarily afford country doctors.” \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh huh, right...     \n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nDo you think that is true?\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nUh, I think we can afford anything we want to in this country; I think people don’t value family doctors as much as they should.  I think the life of a family doctor...people coming out of med school don’t see the value of that and I think society has changed enough and they see the whole world and they don’t want that life because A) it’s a hard life and B) they don’t want to take away home all that responsibility, time, effort, and people knocking on their door or stopping them at Wal-Mart asking them about their toe fungus.  I think the kids of today want a much more measured life and the families want things that they don’t necessarily get in rural practice; it’s a hard life and I admire people who do it.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nYeah...\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nIt’s always been a hard life and still is a hard life and I think the values are not there for the people coming out.  Of course, it’s just like in all of family medicine...they can go be an ophthalmologist, dermatologist, or any kind of –ologist and make twice the money. While it’s not necessarily important to make lots of money, it’s important that you can support your family.  I think a family doc who only has one income, it’ not a very lucrative life; I know what family docs make and it’s a good life compared to somebody working at a grocery story; but they can make a much better life by being an -ologist.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nWell, thank you very much.  I appreciate it, but that’s all the questions I’ve got.\n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nOk; great.\n\nDr. Sam Taggart: \n\nThat was a wonderful interview and I just thoroughly enjoyed that. \n\nDr. Dan Knight: \n\nWell, I have given it a lot of thought as far as all the topics you’ve talked about and I have been involved in all of them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/97852/file/194932#t=0.0,5322.317"}]}]}]}