Not many five-year-olds know what they truly want to be when they grow up but that was not the case for David Yakin, MD, an orthopedist with Sports Orthopedic and Spine in Jackson, Tennessee. For the native northerner, hockey and skiing may be a couple of his passions, but it was his dislike of living in cold weather that ultimately led him to become a southern boy. While he is hard pressed to find many hockey rinks in West Tennessee, the avid sports enthusiast has still found a way to stay in the game while not being on the field or the ice.
Growing up outside of Pittsburg in Western Pennsylvania, Yakin knew at an early age he wanted to be a doctor and that desire grew as he did. “No one in my family was a doctor but I just somehow always thought that is what I would do,” said Yakin. “While I did excel in science and math throughout school and the idea of being a doctor grew more and more appealing to me as I got older, I really didn’t even know there was a difference between a family doctor and a specialist until around medical school.”
After graduating from a small Catholic High School, Yakin headed to the home of golf legend Arnold Palmer and Rolling Rock beer, St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania where he majored in biology and minored in chemistry. While in college, he interned at a rehabilitation center that treated patients who had recently become paraplegic. “I was looking for a job and thought it would be interesting. It actually sparked my interest in orthopedics,” said Yakin. “Patients spent three to four months in the center after the accident that caused them to be paraplegic.”
For medical school, Yakin went to Hahnemann University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “There wasn’t a lot of exposure to orthopedics,” he said. “But one of my mentors was the team physician for the Philadelphia Flyer’s hockey team and we went to lots of games. I have always been an avid sports enthusiast and it was just a natural match with orthopedics so I geared my electives toward orthopedics.”
After medical school, Yakin completed a one-year surgical internship in Pittsburgh at Allegheny General Hospital, during which he spent several months working in a neurosurgical intensive care unit that sparked his interest in neurosurgery. At the time, Allegheny was in the process of getting a neurosurgical program, which caused Yakin a dilemma – neurosurgery or orthopedics. After several months of deliberating, orthopedics won out.
During his residency training at Hamot Medical Center in Erie, Pennsylvania, Yakin was exposed to what he calls ‘a little bit of everything’ on the orthopedic spectrum. He also met his future wife there. “While my main love was the sports side of things, I really liked the variety orthopedics offered. It wouldn’t suit me to just do one type of operation the rest of my life,” he said.
As his residency training was coming to an end, Yakin got married and had to decide where he would practice. One major factor in his search for a practice to join was location. “Erie is beautiful two months out of the year. The rest of the time it is cold, dreary and you don’t see the sun for six months,” said Yakin. “Since we had no kids and no ties, we wanted to head south to get out of the cold. North Carolina and Georgia were on our radar when I got a call from Dr. Keith Nord, who had been in practice for a year in Jackson, Tennessee. We had never heard of Jackson, but we came down and met with Dr. Nord. We hit it off immediately and really saw eye to eye on lots of things. After another visit a few months later, we knew it was for us. After nearly 18 years, I would say it was not a bad decision.”
Sports is more than just part of the clinic’s name since the practice serves as team physicians to several local high school and area college teams as well as the Southern League Jackson Generals, a minor league baseball team and AA affiliate of the Seattle Mariners. Yakin also got to feed his love of hockey while the clinic was the team physicians for the River Kings hockey team in Desoto County Mississippi. “I played hockey growing up and had served on the medical team for a semi-pro hockey team while in my residency. They even let me skate with them,” said Yakin. “When the opportunity arose to work with the River Kings, I jumped on it. After a while it just go to be too much with all the travel and the number of games, so we gave it up.”
As team physicians for the Generals, someone from the clinic attends every home game. “We take care of anything they need and consult with their trainers,” said Yakin. “We evaluate players in their training room or the office. Baseball is a chronic repetitive injury sport, so things don’t happen on the field as much as they do in sports such as football. Pros demand so much out of their bodies and require so much precision in what they do that any small thing can make a huge difference in performance.”
Although Yakin migrated to the South to escape the cold, he still gets his fair share of it through his passion for skiing. “I live to ski,” said Yakin. “I will ski anywhere and come winter, I’m on the slopes as much as I can. My daughter and son have been skiing since they were five and they are teenagers now. My partners share in my love of skiing so we try to take one big helicopter skiing adventure each year together.”
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