1970 Frustrated by the over-emphasis on technology and science to the exclusion of the more human aspects of medicine, and rebelling against the intentional demoralization of students, I got out my old globe from grade school (I still have it, in fact), put my finger on where I was (San Diego), and another on the exact opposite side to get as far away as I possibly could, then proceeded to go there (Uganda). I had to ask the Customs Officer in Entebbe where Ngora was, as it was not on the map, but I learned more in three months there than I did in the other three years of med school. Kwashiorkor (means red hair in Swahili), Tb, C-sections by kerosene lamp, lots of parasites (we called it a grand slam if the patient had four kinds at the same time), ether, and more – if a patient didn’t have malaria when they came in, they got it on the wards. Three patients per bed (one on, one in between, and one under).
Fetal heart tones – no Doppler there.
I got to do my first C-section after watching one.
I helped rescue a priest on top of Kilimanjaro.
1972-3 rotating internship at Providence Hospital, the oldest hospital in Seattle. They closed the program down the year after I finished, but it wasn’t my fault – really. I turned down the directorship of Evergreen in Kirkland when it was offered to me in my last month there.
1973-5 ER work in lots of podunk hospitals in the Puget Sound area, then settled down to work in the hospitals in Everett (back then the ER doc also served as the county Mental Health Professional and got to send crazies to Western State), but I quit as the politics were so bad that on average one patient a month was dying needlessly.
1976 My Dad talked me into coming out to work in his clinic in Iowa and see what family practice was like. I’d probably still be there, except I couldn’t live my life so close to my Mom. I finally told her to stop telling me what to do, but the next day she called the answering service and had them relay her message, so it boiled down to either West Coast or East Coast. No ER jobs in Seattle, so I hopped on the ferry to Bremerton. They were down to only two docs to cover 24 hours a day when I showed up. Staff membership approval took all of a half-hour, so I started the next day. Never figured on 35 years here.
1979-80 I managed the Emergency Treatment Facility in Port Orchard (near where Harrison Urgent Care is now), including staffing, payroll, and scheduling, for the Public Hospital District under a corporation set up by me and two other ER doctors.
1980-6 Director of the Emergency Department at Harrison
1983 Representative on the Technical Advisory Committee for the Subacute Transitional Care Facility Advisory Board for Kitsap County (fancy name for how to spend Trident impact funds for a mental health unit – this led to what we now know as the Adult Inpatient Unit, originally called the Residential Treatment Facility, basically a place to detain crazies – we should have called the committee The Funny Farm Formers).
1986-9 Medical Program Director for Kitsap County EMS
1987, 1990-8 Clinical Co-investigator for various heart attack trials and registries, including TIMI-I – first use of tPA in Western Washington, ISIS-4, NRMI-1 and -2, Rheothrx for MIs, and ASSENT-1 and -2.
1992-4 Director of the Emergency Department at Harrison again
1993-7 Board of Directors of Washington ACEP, worked on getting UW to do an EM residency
1993-9 Consultant for the Casualty Care Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland (affiliated with the uniformed services medical school, sponsor of the CONTOMS course, and keeper of the Viet Nam War repository, where every bullet and piece of shrapnel from every casualty in the War has been saved, along with the records on every soldier injured there, for researching treatment techniques). On one of my trips out East, my job was to write a grant proposal to set up a similar repository for research purposes for mine injuries, but I had to rewrite my report, as they didn’t like my idea of sending over a bunch of mad cows from Britain (this was when they had the big outbreak) to tromp around and explode the mines, then use the meat for hamburger to feed the poor peoples over there in Afghanistan or wherever. Made sense to me.
1995 Tactical EMT certification from the CONTOMS course (COunter-Narcotics Tactical Operations Medical Support – basically training to hang out with SWAT teams and do the medical thing without getting in their way, or becoming a casualty yourself). Also took the military courses on Chemical and Biological Warfare (supposedly the first civilian to be allowed to do this) sponsored by USAMRIID at Fort Detrick.
1995 Treated a guy with unstable angina and decompensated heart failure during a trans-Atlantic flight (got him through with borrowed Nitro and oxygen, decided not to have the airplane make an emergency landing in Iceland), then sent a letter to several airlines suggesting better emergency equipment on board, which they subsequently have done. They took him off the plane in Chicago and did an immediate bypass.
1998 Councilor to national ACEP meeting
1998 Participant in a demonstration of telemedicine at the Addis Forum on Trade and Investment in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (companies have a hard time convincing their employees to go work there due to the lack of medical facilities, so we demonstrated that we could bring US medical equipment over, and hook up with their very own doctor back home, anywhere in the world, for advice or treatment).
1998 and 2005 Christian Medical Response Team (Dan Diamond’s disaster group) for Bumbershoot in 1998 and the Creation rock concerts in 2005
1999-2001 Principal Investigator for the MAGIC trial (MAGnesium In Coronaries), as the cardiologists got burned out and wouldn’t do studies in our ER any more.
2000-2006 Financial Manager for the EMPSD (Emergency Medicine Professional Services Division) – seems that every ten years the hospital wants us to either become independent (if employees) or employees (if independent), and they wanted us back in the fold again after the exodus in 1997.
2000-2005 Co-investigator for more cardiac trials (ASSENT-III and FINESSE) – the cardiologists were back on board again.
2000-2009 Medical Director for Olympic Ambulance, Kitsap and Thurston Counties. I put on an advanced airway course for them, to show them five different and easy ways to intubate, and basically guaranteed that after the course they would be always able to intubate a patient, if anybody could.
2006 Founding Partner of West Sound Emergency Physicians, PLLC – the hospital wanted us independent again. Cool – we get to have a management company from Texas, billing company in California, pension company in Utah, a lawyer in Seattle, and an accountant in Bremerton.
2008-2011 Medical Director for the Kitsap County Jail as an employee of ConMed.
But wait, there’s more ---
¨ Ronald Reagan signed my Medical School Diploma in 1972. Yes way.
¨ I got a nice mounted plaque for working a week in Curtis, Nebraska, for Project USA in 1973. If you wanted to know where somebody was, you just dialed “O.”
¨ In 1974, I wrote a Congressman who then started a Congressional investigation into the PHALANX missile system (based on information from a friend who worked for the Atomic Energy Commission), which uses depleted uranium as projectiles to punch holes in tanks. Problem is, when used it also vaporizes and leaves a bunch of radioactive dust that takes a few billion years to decay. As a result, the military essentially did not use it in the first Gulf War. They did in the second one, however, creating the Road of Death in Iraq, but at least thousands of people are alive today who might have died otherwise.
¨ In 1991, I sent letters to the Joint Chiefs and some members of Congress with my idea for Solar Wars – put big satellite mirrors in stationary orbit over the Middle East, then focus the beams to fry any enemy troops. None of our troops would be at risk, the enemy could not move forward, and would probably just go hide or give up. Too bad they didn’t go for it.
¨ In 1996, I was chosen the VIP of the month for the ER by the staff. I felt honored, but the program only lasted a couple of months.
¨ Also in 1996, I helped put on a telemedicine course in Landstuhl, Germany, to train Army medics for work in remote areas. It was pretty cool, as a doctor over in Bosnia happened to call in desperate need of help while I was there, and I and John Hagmann coached her through treatment of a soldier in status asthmaticus who could not be airlifted for at least 12 hours due to weather, and even more cool, we had to improvise since she had no nebulizer equipment or asthma meds at the time (we used cardiac drugs).
¨ In 1997, I initiated a domestic violence awareness campaign, which led to the first Domestic Violence county-wide Summit (I co-chaired the medical part). Since then, the County has set up a Domestic Assault unit to prosecute abusers. The YWCA ALIVE organization gave me an award that year (not many guys get an award from a women’s organization).
¨ In 2001, working through Senator Maria Cantwell’s office (I sent lots of letters and made lots of calls), I got Nurse Practitioners approved to work in emergency departments (Medicare previously would not pay for their services in that location).
¨ Over the years I designed several templates (supplementary procedures, brief and universal ER, body diagrams), one of which Xpress Charts then added to their system in 2003.
Let’s see, that means that I have been an EP, MHP, GP, EDD, and MPD, plus the old standby of OFEM. More recently, I have worked in emergency rooms in Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands, another on the North Slope of Alaska, and a medium-sized ER in Sanford Maine, plus I taught EM residents in the Rashid Hospital Trauma Centre in Dubai, UAE. My son said that working in the Caribbean, the ice world of the Arctic Circle, and the desert in the Middle East was kind of a Star Wars thing (Endor, Hoth, and Tatooine), to which I replied that I supposed that made my job at the jail like working on the Death Star.
Outside of work, I have climbed Mount Rainier with my son Whit, married eight couples, hosted several Harry Potter parties, finished five marathons including one in Athens in 2004, play the flute sometimes, helped the County Medical Society with a big Photoshop project for their Fire and Ice fundraiser in 2010, and got an Extreme Makeover in 2005, courtesy of a few nurses who felt it was time for me to get a new “do” and new duds.
My recent jobs include helping to cover Advanced Allergy and Asthma clinic, part-time Urgent Care in Belfair for Harrison, on-call for the ERs in Silverdale and Bremerton, occasionally working in the ER in Goldendale Washington, ER working somewhat more often in Ilwaco, Washington, expert witness testimony coming up in June, and working in a small ER in Mount Vernon, Texas. My commute is now a couple thousand miles instead of a couple hundred yards. I might go back to Alaska (did some telemedicine and inpatient/hospitalist work in October of 2009 and again in May of 2010) or Maine, but I hope to cut back to only full-time and only three jobs by the end of summer. I don’t expect to keep working in the jail.
One more thing -- my cousin, a computer expert, is hopeful that she will be able to use my Three Second Exam idea to improve the teaching of medical students, and has been working with top educators at the University of Illinois and Rush University to get a grant to make it happen. Helping new doctors become experts quickly would be a great legacy.