Twin Doctors Lead Hometown Emergency Department

Identical twin physicians who returned to their hometown of Richmond, Virginia, to co-lead the emergency department at a local hospital have been garnering recent media attention.

Travan Jasper, MD, and Travis Jasper, MD, have been featured on ABC News, in the Washington Post, and most recently on the CBS Evening News.

In April, they took jobs as co-directors of the emergency department at HCA Healthcare’s Chippenham Hospital, a 466-bed Level 1 trauma center in Richmond.

They wear different color scrubs so patients and colleagues can tell them apart: Travan wears purple, while Travis wears green.

It was the hospitalization of their uncle when they were 12 years old that prompted them to go into medicine. The uncle had developed liver failure from years of alcohol abuse, and the doctor was very dismissive, according to the CBS News story.

Travan and Travis wanted to do better for their community, they said; so in the hallway of that hospital, they decided they would become doctors.

From then, their mission was clear. The boys got straight A’s in school and ended up as co-valedictorians of their high school class. They went on to do their undergraduate studies at Stanford, then to medical school at the University of Chicago (their MCAT scores were just one point apart).

But that path wasn’t always obvious. The boys grew up without much money, and without running water, they said. They were hungry — both literally and figuratively, Travis told CBS News.

“All this stuff we went through, all the negative days, made us who we are now,” Travis said.

They were the first in their family to go to college, let alone medical school, according to ABC News.

After graduating from medical school, they did their residencies in emergency medicine at the University of Michigan. When they applied to residency, they categorized themselves as a couple so they could work together, according to the Washington Post.

They spent years working in hospitals in Georgia, including as co-directors of an emergency department there.

Then, it was back to their hometown at Chippenham Hospital so they could serve the community that helped raise them.

“One of the things we did when we came back is we called all those people [we grew up with] and said … ‘Look, there’s some new sheriffs in town, come to Chippenham if you want excellent care in the emergency department, come to Chippenham because we’re going to be a part of it,'” Travis told ABC News.

They said they work different shifts to make it easier for colleagues and patients to distinguish between them.

Chippenham Hospital CEO Lance Jones, MHA, said in a statement to ABC News that the Jasper brothers are an “asset” to the hospital.

“Their shared commitment to clinical excellence, collaboration, and compassionate care reflects our mission to care for and improve human life,” Jones said in the statement. “By treating every patient with the same attention, respect, and support they would want for their own family members, they help ensure our emergency department delivers exceptional care when it matters most.”