Dr. Jimmy Webb retires from Woman's Clinic after 33 years

Born and raised outside of Alamo, Dr. Jimmy Webb was practicing medicine in Nashville when he learned about an opportunity to practice in Jackson that he couldn’t pass up.

Dr. Jimmy Webb is enjoying the freedom that retirement brings.

It was 1971, he says. “I ran into an old friend from Jackson at a UT football game and he told me that Dr. Swan Burruss and Dr. Don Lewis at the Woman’s Clinic were looking for a partner. I met with them, came back to Jackson – and have thoroughly enjoyed being at the clinic.”

After 33 years at the Woman’s Clinic, Dr. Webb has retired. Though he’s looking forward to the freedom of being retired, he misses the staff and patients at the clinic, he says.

Dr. Webb grew up on a farm in Crockett County. Though playing baseball was a childhood passion, he knew he couldn’t make a living at it. His grandfather encouraged him to go into medicine.

Dr. Webb chose obstetrics and gynecology because he enjoyed it as a medical student and the faculty teaching that specialty “were great.” With a medical degree from the University of Tennessee, he spent two years in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood, Texas, and then three years practicing medicine in Nashville before joining the Woman’s Clinic.

The beginning years of his practicing medicine, he says, were less hectic and more enjoyable in many ways. In recent years, he says, the medical legal climate has made his specialty much more defensive and more stressful.

In the early 70s, he and Dr. Lewis were among the physicians instrumental in starting the use of epidurals at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital during labor and delivery. An epidural lessens a woman’s pain and allows her to stay alert during her baby’s delivery.

As much as possible, Dr. Webb believed in spending time with each patient and “listening” to her. One of his medical professors taught him, he says, that “in 80 percent of the time, you can diagnose a patient by getting a good history from her and doing a thorough physical. You learn more about a patient by listening to her and checking her over thoroughly than by doing a lot of lab tests.”

These days, Dr. Webb plays golf several times a week, reads and enjoys his freedom. He’s been working, he says, since he was 12 years old.

His wife, Nelda, teaches nursing at Union University. They have two children and five grandchildren.

He feels fortunate that he got the opportunity to join the Woman’s Clinic at the beginning of his career, he says. “My life has been blessed.”