Hand surgeon Dr. Grayson Terral is no stranger to St. Tammany Health System.
The Covington native was born at the health system’s flagship St. Tammany Parish Hospital. When he was a kid, he used to round there with his father, local pediatrician Dr. William L. Terral. After graduating medical school and moving back to the Northshore, he became accredited by the hospital to care for his patients there.
But beginning Jan. 9, Dr. Terral will truly become a member of the St. Tammany Health System family with the opening of the St. Tammany Hand Center, a new specialty clinic located at the health system’s growing facility on St. Ann Drive in Mandeville.
“This is a very familiar place for me,” Dr. Terral said. “I decided to leave and train, and when it came time to find a place to return to work and raise a family, I couldn’t think of a better place.”
After graduating from St. Paul’s School in Covington, Dr. Terral earned his undergraduate degree at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and his medical degree at LSU-Shreveport. He followed that with general surgical training with Ochsner in New Orleans and a hand surgery fellowship in Jackson, Mississippi.
It was early in that journey that Dr. Terral settled on hand surgery as a specialty.
What convinced him?
“I love to tell everybody I broke my finger playing football at LSU, but it was intramural flag football – it was not varsity,” he said with a laugh. “It needed surgery, so I had it treated and then, as I needed to figure out what I was going to do long-term as a career, that lingered in the back of my mind and came to the forefront.”
At the St. Tammany Hand Center, Dr. Terral will address ailments from the fingertips to the elbows, including vascular, nerve, tendon, muscle, bone and joint issues. The clinic includes in-office imaging capabilities, including X-ray and ultrasound, as well as on-site certified hand therapists specializing in hand injuries.
“It’s certainly exciting,” he said, “as someone who was born in this hospital, raised in Covington, to now come back and provide care to those who need it – friends, neighbors and relatives – so they don’t have to go elsewhere or leave the area to receive the care that we hope to provide.”