Joel Robertson: Coming home to practice medicine

A couple of years ago, Joel and Sarah Robertson had a feeling that their lives were going to change in the near future. Joel was working as a physician’s assistant in Green River with a thriving practice built over a 14-year period, and the couple were raising their four kids in their adopted community.

But something was tugging at the pair – home.

“My wife and I about two years ago (had the feeling) individually; they were unrelated,” he said. “She started having this feeling, and I started having this feeling, and we finally talked. We didn’t know that each other was feeling that way, and we were kind of confused because we kind of knew that we eventually wanted to make it back up (to Lovell), but we didn’t have a time frame. We didn’t know if that was retirement or when. So when that happened, we were both a little bit surprised that it was then.”

Joel Robertson and Sarah Croy were childhood sweethearts and married in high school, graduating in 2002. The son of Kevin and Brenda Robertson, Joel was a three-sport athlete, excelling in football, basketball and track—a member of the 2002 LHS state champion basketball team. And he always had Sarah at his side.

“We’ve been together since we were 14; we were freshmen when we started dating,” he said.

The two went off to the University of Wyoming together. Sarah earned a degree in math and science, and Joel intended to major in pharmacy but changed his mind, earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing instead, then went to work at Ivinson Memorial Hospital.

“I’d always been interested in medicine as a whole, and I remembered Ken (Ferbrache),” he said. “And I thought, ‘hey, I think that sounds really interesting; I think I can do a lot of good and help a lot of folks.’ I thought of him initially and my experiences through sporting stuff with him, and luckily, I didn’t need to come to a doctor very often, but when I did, it was Ken who I saw, and that is what got me on the path to thinking that’s what I wanted.”

He then decided to take his career a step further and earned a master’s degree at A.T. Still University in Arizona to become a physician’s assistant.

“I did a rotation up here, actually, while I was in school in 2012, so I was able to come back home for a couple of months, then went back down to finish school and went straight up to Green River,” he said.

Robertson was also offered a position in Casper, but Green River felt right.

“I assumed it was going to be Casper. That’s just kind of what I thought was going to happen,” he said. “We just prayed about it and thought about it, and then I said, ‘I think it’s Green River,’ and we were, like, ‘I don’t know why. We have no connections, and it’s way far away.’ But it was a great place to practice and to raise my family. I couldn’t have had a better experience down in Green River for our time down there. We were really fortunate.”

The Robertsons moved to Green River upon Joel’s graduation in 2012, and Joel spent 14 years in family practice and pediatrics at Castle Rock Medical Center, a clinic with some six to eight providers, he said.

Joel and Sarah have been raising four kids in Green River: Jenna Trujillo of Laramie, who runs food services at the Laramie Mission; William, a senior at UW majoring in biology and environment and natural resources; Adam, a freshman at UW majoring in biology with plans to enter the medical field; and Audrey, a freshman at Lovell High School.

Coming home

The Robertsons had lived happily in Green River for more than 12 years when that feeling that they ought to return home to Lovell started pulling at them. So Joel made an inquiry at North Big Horn Hospital.

“I reached out to Eric (Connell, CEO) in January just to kind of say, ‘hey, there’s this guy who’s from the area and is looking at opportunities to come back. We feel like this is where we’re supposed to be. And there was no spot at the time. It was just kind of more of a when the time happens.”

Robertson said he just wanted Connell to know “this is what I do, and this is where I’m at, and I’d love to have a conversation more specifically about opportunities.”

Robertson and Connell touched base again in March and once more in April.

“Even as late as April, to be honest, I didn’t think it was going to happen the way we hoped it would, I guess, because if we could have designed it two years ago, if God Himself would have come down and said, ‘Joel, this is going to happen, and I’m going to let you choose how it’s going to work,’ it literally would have been the way it’s worked.

“It’s been kind of a testimony building experience to me that the Lord’s in the details, and that’s just really neat and such a blessing to watch that just all fall into place the way that it did.”

Remarkably, after the initial conversations about coming to Lovell, a position opened up at the hospital and clinic when physician’s assistant Kaitlyn Bresee went on maternity leave. Robertson drove to Lovell for an initial interview on April 2, then interviewed a second time remotely by Teams with Connell, Clinic Manager Amber James and Human Resources Director Kirsten Bryson.

The following Monday, Connell called and asked if Robertson would be available for a third interview with the providers the following day, and at the very hour the CEO wanted to do the interview, Robertson happened to have an opening in his busy schedule – 4 to 5 p.m.

“And then I went back to work, because I had patients again from five to six,” he said. “And while I was in with my last patient, I got a phone call with a, ‘Hey, we have a job. Would you like to come work at North Big Horn Hospital?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely.’

“We knew that this was the plan. This is what we wanted to do. This is what we felt like we were supposed to do, and it was a kind of a no hesitation.”

It wasn’t just family and a longing to return home that has brought Robertson back to Lovell. He said the community has a great thing going in the hospital and clinic.

“It’s a pretty phenomenal thing to see what we have here in Lovell with the array of family practice providers, surgery, GYN, cardiac, oncology, orthopedics. You don’t get this (in most communities). This is special, and we’re still growing. We’re planning to improve our ability to provide top quality care, and so it’s exciting to be a part of that, as well.”

And so everything has fallen into place for the Robertson family. They sold their house in Green River in three days and quickly found a house to buy in Lovell. He is already building a new practice, even as he misses his friends and patients and the relationships he developed in Green River. He knew many of his new patients while growing up.

“This was such a great community growing up. It offered myself and my family so much that I’m really excited to be able to give back and be a part of the community again. Like I said, this is such a special place. … It just has my heart, the community does. This is where all of our family is. So we’re coming home to aging parents and grandparents that can use some support, and I am kind of positioned in life right now that I can offer that.”

And home is where the Robertsons want to stay.

“Our slogan at our house is ‘40 more years,’” he said. “Our hope is to live and die in that house. Our roots want to be planted.”