Twin doctors return to Richmond to lead the ER they once dreamed of running

Identical twin doctors Travan and Travis Jasper have returned to Richmond to co-direct a hospital ER after growing up in poverty and pursuing medicine together.

Travan and Travis Jasper spent their childhood in Richmond, Virginia, without many of the basic comforts other families took for granted. Decades later, the identical twins are back in the same city, this time sharing responsibility for one of its emergency departments.

The brothers became co-directors of the emergency department at Chippenham Hospital in April, turning a decades-old ambition into their professional reality. CBS News first highlighted their unusual journey, while PEOPLE later detailed how their difficult upbringing helped shape the physicians they became.

Their childhood was marked by poverty, including periods without running water and times when food was scarce. Rather than allowing those circumstances to define their future, the twins pushed each other academically and eventually graduated from high school as co-valedictorians.

A pivotal moment came when they were 12. Their uncle was hospitalized with liver failure, and the boys recalled feeling frightened and looking to the treating physician for reassurance. Instead, they said, the doctor responded dismissively about their uncle’s condition.

That experience changed how they viewed medicine.

The brothers later attended Stanford University before going to the University of Chicago for medical school. Their shared path eventually brought them back to Richmond, where they could serve patients in the community that raised them.

Their leadership arrangement comes with a practical challenge that few other medical teams face: patients and colleagues can easily mistake one twin for the other. Their solution is simple. They wear different-colored scrubs, with one choosing green and the other purple.

The resemblance does not stop at work. CBS News reported that the brothers also live in the same building, underscoring the unusual closeness that has followed them through childhood, education and their medical careers.

Their return also gives the pair an opportunity to approach emergency medicine through the lens of their own experiences. The brothers have said the hardships they endured influenced the way they think about patients and compassion.

A childhood spent worrying about basic necessities eventually led both men into medicine, and now their careers have brought them back to the neighborhood where that ambition first took shape.