KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

Dr. Clifford Seyler of Tullahoma Pediatrics celebrated a major milestone in his career, as he has been in the medical field as a pediatrician for 50 years.

Seyler is a Board Certified Medical Doctor, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and an Associate of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

His career began when he received his medical degree from University of Mississippi School of Medicine and trained at Texas Children’s Hospital, where he finished as Chief Resident. He said when he finished his residency in 1974, he traveled to Pascagoula, Miss., to begin his career as a pediatrician. When he got to Pascagoula, he not only worked as the local pediatrician plus worked as a caregiver of a hospital to a town with a population size of over 10,000, and the extra 27,000 workers who built war ships for the military. He said he took everything he learned from his time in medical school and put it into practice.

“The situation was such that we had a tremendous number of diseases we were treating on a regular basis,” he said. “All of that has changed with immunizations. Immunizations today are given a lot of rift-raft, but if they could have been transported 25 or 30 years ago they would be begging not to get meningitis.”

According to Seyler, they were four hours away from the biggest children’s hospital in Mississippi and at the time the state wasn’t cooperating with other states and pay for Medicaid expenses.

“So if I sent a child to Mobile, which was 30 minutes away, they wouldn’t accept them because they had Mississippi Medicaid,” Seyler said.

Because of this, patients would have to go to Jackson, but there was not a transportation system, like ambulance services, equipment or trained technicians for sick newborns to make it to the hospital without loss of continuity.

“In those days there would be tremendous loss of continuity because there wasn’t anybody in the transport business,” Seyler recalled. “We were landlocked.”

Seyler would spend nearly two decades in Mississippi treating his patients locally or he would receive patients from the hospital in Jackson due to hospital overflow. He also made an impact on legislature as well—as he worked with a state legislator to eventually pass the first seatbelt law in Mississippi in the early 1990s, where he is referred to as the “father” of the Mississippi seatbelt law.

However, by 1990 Seyler made the decision to move and eventually made his way to Tullahoma, after visiting 32 potential offices and hospitals, and joined Dr. Shirley Bard at the Pediatric Center at the time, and has remained in Tullahoma ever since.

 “We took a chance and came here, and it’s been a good ride ever since,” he said.

Today, Seyler serves as the medical doctor at both Tullahoma Pediatrics and Manchester Pediatrics, PLLC, where he oversees eight nurse practitioners and the rest of his staff. When comparing the difference in the medical field over his five decade career, he described what was available in the medical field as “primitive” when comparing to what’s available to treat patients today, stating at the time treating a child was a guessing game since there were no ultrasounds, MRIs, CT scans and so on.

“You give it the best educated guess and most of the time we were right, but at the same time we weren’t always sure,” he said.

For Seyler, he wants people to appreciate where the medical field is at today when facing today’s diseases.

“They don’t have to face the diseases of the past and how much things have tremendously improved for kids as far as germs go,” he said. “It’s revolutionary.”

As for what’s next, Seyler said he is going to continue seeing patients, as he sees mental health as the biggest issue facing children today.

“My intention is to practice as long as I can because from a mental health standpoint, there’s a lot of need for it and I can help a lot of people and make a difference,” he said.

As for what he has learned in 50 years, Seyler said what really makes a difference in a child’s health is the mother. He recalled a mother who he praised for care of her child, who had to be on a ventilator when he slept otherwise he would stop breathing due to a rare disease, for 18 months before ultimately passing away due to an infection.

“Mothers make a difference,” Seyler said. “Mothers are tremendous.”