Identical twin doctors who grew up without running water have returned to their old Richmond neighbourhood as co-directors of the emergency department at Chippenham Hospital.
Drs Travan and Travis Jasper took up the roles in April, more than four decades after a childhood experience helped inspire them to pursue medicine.
When the brothers were 12, their uncle was admitted to a Richmond hospital, which has since closed, with liver failure linked to alcoholism. The twins said they were distressed when a doctor dismissed their concerns and told them their uncle was getting what he deserved.
“We talked about it out in the hallway,” Travan Jasper said. The brothers decided they could offer patients and families better care than the doctor they had encountered.
The twins had grown up among some of the poorest children in their neighbourhood. “We had no running water,” Travan said. “We used to go and get water from like one of the parks. And we were hungry, hungry literally and hungry for success. Because for us, that was the only way we were going to get out.”
They went on to graduate from high school as co-valedictorians, studied for their undergraduate degrees at Stanford and attended medical school at the University of Chicago.
Now they work together in the emergency department serving the community where they grew up. The brothers live in the same building and wear different-coloured scrubs — green and purple — so colleagues and patients can tell them apart.
Travis Jasper said the hardships they experienced had shaped their approach to their work. “I think all of the stuff that we went through, all of the negative days, made us who we are now,” he said.
