If you ask Sullivan “Sully” Smith, MD, FACEP, he says his kids paid the price for his medical service to the community of Cookeville, Tennessee. 

As an emergency physician, Dr. Sully Smith missed birthday parties, tee-ball games and an entire season of soccer. He imagined his absence would push his four children far away from following in his medical footsteps. There’s a lingering note of surprise in Dr. Sully Smith’s voice when he talks about his kids now; all four grown and pursuing careers in the medical field. 

Emergency physician Skyler Smith, DO, MBA, dresses up like her dad, Sullivan Smith, MD, FACEP, for Halloween.

Three of them specifically chose emergency medicine, the exact job that called their dad away so often throughout their childhood. 

“I figured that might push them away from it, because in a small town, we’re oftentimes understaffed, and when you’re the medical director, you’re the one who steps up and covers when nobody else will,” Dr. Sully Smith said. “So they paid the subsidy price for it, and yet they still chose to do it.” 

Each of them has taken their own unique path to get there, but Torey Killom, DO, Skyler Smith, DO, MBA, and Sullivan Smith, DO, all cite their dad as the reason they ended up in emergency medicine. What stuck with them was not their father’s absence from home, but his presence in a community that looked to him at its most critical moments. 

“I think he raised all of us to know that we had to find some way to give back,” Dr. Skyler Smith, 30, said. “We just saw the way that he was able to do that through emergency medicine and kind of we all followed his footsteps.” 

For Dr. Torey Killom, the second oldest, witnessing his dad’s impact firsthand made his own career path obvious as early as elementary school. Now 40, he serves as the emergency department director at Bradley Medical Center in Cleveland, Tennessee. 

“Getting to see his impact on the community really helped me decide to go into emergency medicine,” he said. “I love the pace of it. You’re never going to see the same thing twice, and you get to see an immediate change in patients’ status. you’re the last line between this patient and death sometimes.” 

For Dr. Sullivan Smith, the youngest, his choice of a career came later in life. When he visited his dad in the emergency department as a kid, other physicians and staff would ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up.