Grandin Medical Clinic marked a milestone on Friday, bringing together current and retired employees in celebration of the clinic’s 50th anniversary.
Dr. Fin Fairfield, co-founder of Grandin Medical Clinic, leaned against a row of check-in desks at one end of the waiting room as he described the early days of the clinic to about 50 people.
“It was just a wonderful place to be in that time,” he said. “We had a lot of fun and we had a lot of good people. It really was a magical place.”
The event featured a plaque presentation dedicated to the clinic, as well as a word from Mayor Nolan Crouse, who presented a certificate of congratulations.
Fairfield said afterwards he was happy with the turnout.
“I think it’s beautiful. It’s been a nice get-together, seeing people that I don’t often get to see,” he said.
Ruth Gramlich, surviving wife of co-founder Dr. Ed Gramlich, said she always remembered her husband as a hard worker.
“Today was very nostalgic, it brought back a lot of memories. When the clinic started he was very busy working,” she said.
Ed passed away in 2014. Both Fairfield and Ed had met while in medical school at the University of Alberta. They interned at the Edmonton General Hospital together and both graduated in 1961.
In 1966 they started the Grandin Medical Clinic.
“Ed was the hardest working man I knew,” Fairfield said. “He was a wonderful partner and friend.”
Dr. Neil Gray, who retired from working at Grandin Medical Clinic in 2011, was one of the first doctors to work at the clinic. He says doctors at the time had to be a jack-of-all-trades.
“Over the 40 years that I was here I managed to get 2,000 deliveries in. They didn’t have any obstetricians at the time. We did everything,” he says. “When I came here I was working 80 hours a week, I was on call every night. Who I was, was what I did.”
Today things are much different. Instead of one family doctor giving annual physical exams, delivering babies and performing anesthetics in the emergency room, there are multiple doctors, each specialized in a different field.
Gray said employees at the clinic were a tight-knit community, and when hired there was only one rule: they had to meet the new employee’s spouse.
Today employees still work together as colleagues and close friends, but the technology has changed.
Dr. James Bell, who has been working at the clinic for 38 years, says he remembers when the clinic first received computers about 13 years ago.
“When we moved into the new system it was a very difficult transition because we had to very gradually take the most useful information out of patients’ charts and make sure it got into the computer,” he said.
Bell says there would be charts for each patient, and depending on the complexity, some would be large and hefty. This would pose a problem when trying to view someone’s medical history.
During the transition, he says the younger doctors at the time had to slowly ease some of the older doctors into how to use the new system. In about a year and a half all the patients’ files were digitized.
Now with one click of a button, doctors can easily view the prescription history and lab results of patients.
While tools at the clinic have remained relatively the same, the medical field is always evolving. He says doctors at the clinic are constantly researching and learning new ways to practice medicine.
Over the last year, Fin’s wife Peggy Fairfield took it upon herself to capture how the clinic has changed over the past 50 years.
Peggy Fairfield unveiled a 75-page book filled with pictures and descriptions of the staff and building over the last half-century. She presented the book at the 50th anniversary celebration.
