When his eighth grade general science class studied the human body, Lee Murray found that he was fascinated by the human body and knew medicine was the path he would take. His stint as an emergency medical technician in college had him thinking the ER was where he would ultimately practice but it was a neuroscience class his first year in medical school that opened his eyes to neurology. Today, Murray not only sees patients through his practice at West Tennessee Neurosciences, he also helps educate medical students in the classroom as a teacher and an author.
Hailing from Southern Missouri and a family of teachers and engineers, Murray was the first to pursue medicine as a career. He double majored in biology and chemistry at Missouri State University in Springfield. After a year doing research, Murray headed to Caribbean to attend Ross University Medical School in Dominica, West Indies for his first two years of medical school training. His clinical rotations were in New York at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn.
“While in college, I had worked as an EMT and really thought emergency medicine is what I wanted to do. But in my first year of med school, it was the basic neuroscience course that every med student has to take that peaked my interest in neurology as a specialty,” said Murray who completed his medical training in 2006. “While some of my friends struggled with the class, to me it made sense, even things we don’t understand about the nervous system intrigued me. It is a specialty that at times requires you to not only run diagnostic tests but also rely on old time medicine and science to arrive at a diagnosis.”
Murray returned to the South to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson for a one year internal medical internship followed by a three-year residency in neurology. He then completed a fellowship in neuromuscular medicine at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “This ultimately transitioned into a neuro-hospitalist experience for me,” said Murray. “I mostly dealt with things such as strokes, comas, refractory seizures and other neurological issues that do not typically run into in a clinical setting.”
After his fellowship was completed, Murray knew he wanted to settle down closer to Southern Missouri and his family. “I was looking for a strong group of neurologists to join,” he said. “I did not even know where Jackson, Tenn. was, but got a call from a recruiter about the group at West Tennessee Neurosciences. All the research indicated it was a very strong group with stellar credentials who were well-respected physicians. I was also very impressed with the overall medical community in Jackson and knew it was the place for me to practice.”
Murray admits he is busier than he thought he would be initially when he joined the group in 2011. “The pathology that is here is very complex and the complexity of problems is quite significant here,” he said. “I wanted to be challenged and being in a large group lets that happen. The challenges here are actually nice because they keep me from getting into a rut.”
While Murray enjoys life as a clinician, he has also always had an interest in the academic side of medicine. For the past year and a half, he has been on the staff at UT Medical Center in Memphis. “It’s a clinical appointment that allows me to teach medical students and residents a couple times a year while maintaining my private practice. I do peer review for several journals and have written a couple of commentaries for Southern Medical Journal,” said Murray. “I also co-authored with my partner, Dr. Karl Misulis, several chapters that will be published in the seventh edition of a neurology textbook. We are also working on a textbook on hospital neurology, which is a significant undertaking. We started it last April but hope to have it completed and published in a year. It is our hope that it will be incorporated into neurology residency training.”
Life outside of the office includes family time with his wife of nine years, Carmen and their three-year-old son, Bennett. The family enjoys returning to Southern Missouri where Murray’s parents have a cattle farm. “It is like reverting to my childhood for me when we go. My dad was an industrial arts teacher for 40 years before getting into cattle farming and my mom was a homemaker,” said Murray. “I love being outside and working. Even though I love nature, I am not much of a gardener but it is a great change of pace from the office life.”
Murray admits that his wife, who is from a large town in Peru, had some reservations at first about life in a small town but those have all gone away. “This has been such a good move for us and we know this is a great place to raise a family,” he said. “I am also so impressed with the caliber of clinicians in the group and it is such a pleasure to work with them.”
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