David Billings, MD, OB/GYN, didn’t initially set out to become a physician. Fresh out of high school, he joined the Air Force with dreams of becoming a dentist. Eventually, Dr. Billings worked as a chairside dental assistant before deciding that dream wasn’t for him. He went on to attend a physician assistant program sponsored by the Air Force and graduated from the University of Oklahoma.
It was during a PA school rotation in obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) that everything changed. Most PA students in the specialty handled a single delivery a month and skipped call entirely. Dr. Billings did 15 to 20 deliveries and didn’t shy away from call at all.
“They said, ‘You really would do well as an OB/GYN,'” Dr. Billings recalled. What drew him in was the variety: primary care, office procedures, surgery and delivering babies, all in one specialty. “It’s got my interest my whole career. I’ve never been bored one time.”
Intending to become an OB/GYN physician, Dr. Billings, while stationed in Grand Forks as a PA, met with the dean of the University of North Dakota’s medical school, finished a few prerequisites and was accepted into the program. He completed his third year of medical school in Bismarck and, thanks to the luck of a random draw and swapping places with a colleague, his fourth year in Minot. That year shaped the rest of his life.
“I had a good friend in medical school whose wife was a lawyer in Bismarck. If he went to Minot, he and his wife would have had to be separated, or she could have lost her job. So, my wife and I talked about it, and we chose to switch with him, and we went to Minot instead,” said Dr. Billings
He and his wife had five children by the time he started medical school, and after 12 moves in 12 years with the Air Force, the family was ready to put down roots. His kids, who had made friends during that fourth-year rotation, asked to come back to Minot for good.
“When my wife and I talked about it, we chose to come to Minot instead because we were used to moving, having made 12 moves in 12 years. So, we ended up coming to Minot, and if we hadn’t come during my fourth year of medical school, I wouldn’t be here now,” he said.
Before returning to Minot, Dr. Billings completed a four-year OB/GYN residency at Michigan State University’s Sparrow Hospital, where he often worked more than 100 hours a week delivering babies alongside two fellow residents, taking call every third night at a hospital that handled 4,000 to 5,000 deliveries a year. The family medicine residency program’s manager even honored him and his co-residents for their teaching and for mentoring the family medicine residents.
“I think my teaching ethics really started there,” Dr. Billings said. “Even as a resident, we would teach students and residents alike. Teaching became a focal point of my career for 30 years, dating back to residency.”
When it came time to return to North Dakota, Dr. Billings was slated for an assignment in Japan. Instead, a spot opened at Minot Air Force Base, where he served as an attending OB/GYN for 2.5 years before transitioning to the Air Force Reserve. In 1998, he joined the UND Center for Family Medicine as a faculty member, and in 2005, a call from a Trinity Health recruiter brought him to Trinity, where he has practiced ever since.
Over nearly three decades of practice, Dr. Billings estimates he has delivered 8,000 to 9,000 babies, including five sets of triplets. During the height of the region’s oil boom, he delivered more than 50 babies in a single month. Through it all, he made a point of never signing his patients out to someone else if he was in town.
“If I was in town, my patients could always get a hold of me, and I would come in for them. It’s not for any other reason than I’ve just been used to that,” Dr. Billings said. He has also delivered second and third generations of the same families, a full-circle moment he says never gets old.
Beyond delivery rooms, Dr. Billings built a practice around infertility and high-risk care, work he calls deeply rewarding. “There’s no greater satisfaction than someone who hasn’t been able to conceive, and you do something that helps them,” he said.
Teaching remained a defining part of his career. As clinical faculty for UND medical residents and a longtime member of the school’s admissions interview committee, Dr. Billings looked for one quality above all in future physicians: passion. “What do you want to be 12 years from now? Someone to remember you as?” he’d ask candidates. He also served as Chief of OB and Chief of Surgery at Trinity Health and represented North Dakota as section chair for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a role that took him to Washington, D.C., to meet with lawmakers on behalf of the state’s OB/GYN providers.
For 26 years, Dr. Billings drove to Devils Lake every month to see Trinity Health patients and cover deliveries and emergencies after the town lost several physicians. When that coverage was no longer needed, he shifted his monthly trips to Williston, and he continued that work until his retirement in August 2026.
Looking back on nearly 30 years in medicine, Dr. Billings hopes his patients remember his compassion, and that his colleagues remember his willingness to help, whether that meant scrubbing in on a colleague’s C-section between clinic appointments or mentoring a nervous resident through a first delivery. He’s especially proud of the staff who have stayed with him for decades, including a nurse and medical assistant who have worked alongside him since the mid-2000s.
“I hope my patients remember that I was compassionate, invested in them and loved what I did,” Dr. Billings said. “I hope my colleagues remember that I was more than willing to go the extra mile for them.”
In retirement, Dr. Billings is looking forward to more time with his family, including his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and with his wife, with whom he’ll celebrate 50 years of marriage this October. The couple plans to keep traveling, something they’ve enjoyed together over the years, and they look forward to having more time to do so.