When it comes to building Union County’s future we need to recruit not only quality businesses and industries but quality people as well.

Dr. Anterpeet Dua, anesthesiologist and pain management physician, and Teresa Pickens, lead mammographer and radiological technician, are prime examples of the quality people this county should strive to attract. That quality was recognized by the Union Hospital District which last week named Dua its 2010 Physician of the Year and presented Pickens with its 2010 Award of Excellence.

Neither Dua nor Pickens are native to Union County and their presence here is a testament to the county’s — and the hospital district’s — ability to attract quality people.

Pickens moved here from Greenwood in 1985 and joined the staff at Wallace Thomson Hospital. She has made the county her home ever since, working at Wallace Thomson for all but three years of her professional life. Those three years were spent at Spartanburg Regional but Pickens soon realized her true home was at Wallace Thomson.

“It’s not the marble floors; it’s the people,” Pickens said. “This place is like family.”

Unlike so many who have lived and worked here and then moved on, never to return, Pickens came back because of Union County’s greatest asset: It’s people and the compassion and caring they show to others. As she herself pointed out, when she first started working at the hospital “everyone her took care of me.”

That care, a defining characteristic of the hospital staff, continued when Pickens gave birth in her seventh month of pregnancy. She said the doctors from Union kept callling and checking on her.

Such care defines Pickens’ career as she works to reassure and comfort patients undergoing procedures such as X-rays, mammograms and surgery. It was the combination of professionalism and compassion that won Pickens the 2010 Award of Excellence and rightly so.

Dua’s journey to Union County began in his native India where he lived and practiced medicine until 2000 when he came to America. He joined the staff of Wallace Thomson in January 2005 after learning the hospital needed an anesthesiologist. A few months later, however, Dua went beyond this to establish the Advance Pain Treatment Center and begin providing much-needed treatment for patients suffering from arthritis, bulging discs and other conditions which cause chronic pain. In the five years since, the center has grown from a few referrals by local physicians to treating patients from within a 60-mile radius of Union.

This is the kind of innovative, forward-looking thinking this county needs if it is to grow and flourish in the future. Health care is a growth industry and while like any truly dedicated physician his primary goal is the well-being of his patients, Dua’s establishment of the pain treatment center is helping Union County benefit from the growing need for health care services.

Dua’s work in pain management is a reflection of his overall dedication to the healing arts and to treating his patients with the dignity an respect they deserve. This has brought him not only praise from his colleagues, but also the much-deserved 2010 Physician of the Year Award.

Even as they honor him, Dua returns their praise citing the teamwork that is the defining characteristic of the hospital staff.

“All the people here are very supportive, very affectionate, very down to earth,” Dua said. “I think it’s the teamwork I enjoy here. Everybody is responsible enough to do his or her job and that makes things go smoothly.”

Dua’s and Pickens’ experiences are a reminder that it is the people in this community that are it’s greatest asset. You can have the most elaborate buildings, the most advanced technology and enormous piles of money, but without decent, dedicated, cooperative, hard-working people to use them they are worse than useless.

The quality of a community and it’s institutions are determined by the quality of their people. The ability of a community and its institutions to attract quality people is also determined by the quality of the people already in place.

There are quality people at Wallace Thomson — and in Union County – and that’s why we’ve been able to attract quality people like Anterpeet Dua and Teresa Pickens. Our ability to attract — and retain — such quality people as they and their colleagues in the hospital district and their counterparts in other areas will determine just how well this county will fare in the 21st century.