Growing up in a little town in southeastern Mississippi, Thad F. Waites, MD, always felt he lived in the shadow of his older brother, Jimmy. Even when he was full grown, at 5 feet, 9 inches tall, he was still six inches shorter than his sibling. And with 11 years between them, Jimmy was well into an esteemed career as a family physician before Dr. Waites had even graduated from high school.
“I idolized him completely. Because of that, I told myself I was not going to ever be a doctor because people would just think I was just following my brother,” Dr. Waites said.
Still, he was stuck on the idea of studying science. That or humanities. So, during his freshman year at college, he took an occupational aptitude test.
“When the results came back, there was one line that was about four times as long as any of the others, and that was medical,” said Dr. Waites, who has been a cardiologist with Hattiesburg Clinic Heart & Vascular, only about 55 miles from his hometown of Waynesboro, since 1987. Hattiesburg Clinic is a member of the AMA Health System Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine.
“I said to myself: Well, I need to kind of rethink this whole thing,” he remembered.
Dinner with a president’s doctor
Dr. Waites began to forge his own identity when he got a job reading EKGs for the physician who ran the heart station at the local Veterans Health Administration hospital. That earned him an introduction to J. Willis Hurst, MD, the former cardiologist for President Lyndon B. Johnson, at the doctor’s house. Dr. Hurst ran Emory University School of Medicine’s internal medicine program.
“Dr. Hurst mentioned he was going to have an intern from Mississippi that year and there was only one applying, so that was me,” Dr. Waites said. “But then I got drafted. I was in the final year of the Vietnam doctor draft—No. 13 of 13, I was told—so after my one year of internship, I went into the military for two and a half years as a flight surgeon for the U.S. Naval Reserve.”
Once he was discharged, he did his internal medicine residency at the University of Colorado Medical School, in Denver, then took a job at Ochsner Medical Center, in New Orleans, still thinking he wanted to do primary care.
“After about a year of that, I said: This isn't it for me, and I called Dr. Hurst up and asked if he had anything available in cardiology,” Dr. Waites recalled. “He said he needed a chief resident.”
Catching a wave
Cardiology in the 1970s wasn’t the specialty it is today. In fact, Dr. Waites had initially ruled it out because he thought there wasn’t enough to it.
“About all you could do back then was give Lasix and digitalis. There was practically nothing else,” he said. “When I was in medical school, there were no coronary care units and so forth. We didn't have anything that people now look at and say, well, that's what cardiology does. We were basically high-level internists.”
Many internists did cardiology despite having no specialized training in it, he noted. But then the specialty started to take off, because of both advances in technology and growing demand.
“As things evolved and as we got new medicines and balloons and catheters, it just blossomed, and every year has seen more and more innovations,” he said. “When transcatheter aortic valve replacement [TVAR] came along, I had a big revelation. It showed me just how much aortic valve disease we actually have when you look for it.”
Now, he said, Hattiesburg Clinic is doing as many TVARs as any other health system in the Gulf Coast area.
The standard of care in physician well-being recognition
Institutions in this article have been honored by the Joy in Medicine™ Health System Recognition Program.
Age is just a number
Dr. Waites turned 80 in February, but he still works every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. He loves to travel with his daughter and granddaughter—something he enjoyed doing with his late wife—but he wonders what he would do without medicine.
“In 2003, I had bypass surgery, so I slowed down a little bit,” he said. “Somewhere around that time, the hospital was complaining that they couldn't get things done in a timely way in the cath lab. They couldn't figure out any kind of schedule that would make things flow easily because people were on call and people were in clinic and so forth. And I said, look, you pay me to be in the cath lab all the time, so I'll cover the ST-elevation myocardial infarctions that come in if the person on call is not available.”
He was considered a jack of all trades. He could do pacemakers, transesophageal echocardiograms, a little of everything. Then the hospital also needed to have someone available for two or three hours at a time for structural heart disease cases.
“That became me—that has been my senior physician job. I do practically all of the transesophageal echoes, as well as cardioversions and things like that,” he said.
He also has served on the Mississippi Board of Health through three governors, helped established the Mississippi Healthcare Alliance—a completely voluntary organization that helped Mississippi become the first state to create trauma, stroke and myocardial infarction systems of care—and been an alternate adviser for the American College of Cardiology on the AMA/Specialty Society RVS Update Committee, which provides relative value recommendations to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services annually.
His work over the last 50-plus years in practice and on policy has earned Dr. Waites numerous honors. In 2024, he was inducted into the Mississippi Medical Center Hall of Fame. He also was named the 2023 distinguished fellow by the American College of Cardiology. This followed his being named master of the American College of Cardiology, an honor bestowed on only three people per year and the president.
“I'm the only person from Mississippi that's ever received this designation,” he noted.
Explore further with the AMA Senior Physicians Section, which gives voice to—and advocates on—issues that affect older-adult physicians, who may be working full time or part time or be retired.
Medicine is about innovation
While the medical profession has changed dramatically over the course of his career, Dr. Waites’ perspective could be useful to younger physicians.
“When I came to Hattiesburg, in 1987, if you were a physician who was on call at night, you just knew that you were going to be busy all the time,” he said. "I can remember being very tired and wondering, did I do the right thing? So that may have been what we now call burnout.”
But creating his own niche helped him steer clear of many of the pitfalls of the profession.
“One of my colleagues once told me, ‘You built your own senior program with this transesophageal echo thing,’ and that's the truth,” he said. “I didn't do it necessarily for that reason; it just happened.”
So when people ask him now if he has ever experienced burnout, he is unequivocal.
"I say never—not a single day,” he said. “I’ve loved my profession for every moment I've been at it. After I got off of night call, I thought back on it and about the only thing I remember that was bothersome was all the telephone calls from the hospital about non-emergency stuff.”
Embracing the continuum
One of Dr. Waites’ goals these days is to support community-based organizations, including his local free clinic.
“I bring them unopened bottles of medicine—some of the really expensive drugs. And in my church, I help put the defibrillators up in the hallways,” he said. “I find it very easy to be beneficial. If you make yourself available, there will be a lot of people asking you: What do you think about this?”
This is one of the benefits of being an older doctor, he said—people tend to come to you with big-picture questions.
“I just couldn't have done any other career. I tell young people this all the time: You have to find what's right for you. If you find something like I did, you'll lead a fulfilling life, because I just couldn't imagine being anything other than a physician and specifically a cardiologist,” he said.
When asked how long he plans to practice, Dr. Waites is circumspect.
“I get asked that question every year,” he said. “The Mississippi Assurance Company of Mississippi, which does our malpractice insurance, they recently said, hey, you're 79—how long you are you going to work? And my answer was: As long as my colleagues allow me to. Because I enjoy what I do. I think I do it well.”
The AMA provides numerous discounts and benefits to members who are fully retired. These include $84 annual membership, full access to JAMA Network®, savings on vehicle purchases and more.
