Transcription of Tom Judge and Dr. Norm Dinerman of LifeFlight for the show LifeFlight #142
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show #142 “LifeFlight.” Airing for the first time on Sunday, June 1st, 2014. As the wellness editor for Maine Magazine it is my great pleasure to interact with many talented committed individuals who are impacting the lives of people in our state. Today we speak with people who deal with life and death on a daily basis.
The subjects of our June Wellness column our guests include LifeFlight medical director, Norm Dinerman, executive director Tom Judge, nurse Missy McCann, and paramedic Frank McClellan. They are joined by K.C. Ford whose life was saved after her plane crashed off of Matinicus. We know you’ll be inspired by the story. Thank you for joining us.
I was fortunate recently to spend time with the men and women of LifeFlight out of their Lewiston LifeFlight office and base. Today I’m extremely fortunate to have Tom Judge and Dr. Norm Dinerman joining me. Tom Judge is the executive director of LifeFlight, and Dr. Dinerman is the medical director of LifeFlight. LifeFlight is known as means flying hospital, and has made itself available for more than 16,000 patients since 1998.
It’s with great gratitude that I have you in here today, because I know that what you do is important, and I know that your time is valuable. Thank you for being here.
Dr. Lisa: I think that I might have told each of you, that I spent a short period of time on a volunteer ambulance service in Yarmouth before I went to medical school. It was amazing to me how dedicated people were, how many years, or decades people would spend in the volunteer realm. One of the things that I was struck by and talking with each of you is how much respect you have for really everybody, within the emergency medical field, and the transport field, and the critical care field.
Tom: It is, I think we hold up this promise and people take it for granted. You call 911 and someone will show up. Really, if you think about this, this is the greatest social promise in the History of human kind and it’s really a simple but profound, if you call us, we will come. Well then think about that, 260,000 times a year, once every 90 seconds or so, some 911 dispatcher is picking up a call, for a medical emergency, somewhere in Maine.
It’s the front end, we have these great Tertiary Hospitals, Portland, Lewiston, and Bangor. We have community hospitals bring out through across the state. In the uncertain moment, when something bad happens at home, if you’re in St. Agath if you’re in Jackman, we should be trying to do everything we can and though the EMS system we do to make sure that Maine street and Jackman is Maine street in Lewiston, is state straight in Bangor, is congress straight in Portland.
Trying to bridge that, and that’s the EMS system, and there’s just … There literally 5,000 people that drop what they’re doing, to take care of Maine and I have been in volunteer in rescue for 35 years, and little quiet now, it’s an important, it’s part of the glue of our community.
Dr. Dinerman: We consider LifeFlight part of the one thread in the tapestry of health care in the state of Maine. One of our motto, as one of our perspectives is simply that everybody needs to be sophisticated. We are really imbued with this issue of layering our skills on those … Of those before us and those that come behind us. It’s imperative that we’re one component of the tapestry. We’re really into continuity of care, and linkage of providers, integration of assets, alignment of management plans, and we are …
If those before us don’t do what they’re supposed to do, we’re not going to have much of a chance, and by extrapolation the patient won’t either.
Dr. Lisa: Both of you are very dedicated to the state of Maine, but you’re not … But you’re Mainers by choice, let’s just say. In fact you Dr. Dinerman you’re a New Yorker.
Dr. Dinerman: I am, a recovering Manhattan actually, and Maine has a … I guess it’s a platform for creativity here, there is a venue here, an acceptance here for new ideas. There’s a cultural imperative here, it’s pragmatic, it’s passionate, it’s purposeful, it’s principle, it’s productive. Those are themes that are part of a cultural fabric of Maine. It’s a wonderful place in which you try and be creative and to bring whatever creativity I have, and we all have to this venue and make it work.
Dr. Lisa: Before you, after you left New York, but before you came to Maine, you were actually part of what has been termed of the Knife and Gun club. You’ve been to a very exciting place, doing very exciting medicine.
Dr. Dinerman: Well it was … Yes, I was privilege to work with Dr. Peter Rosen, at Denver … Was then Denver General Hospital now called Denver Health. Was able to run the 911 system for Denver, and do their disaster preparedness and was the associate director in the emergency department in Denver, at Denver General. It was really a very interesting venue, certainly extremely intense and captured if you will the intimacy of the urban New Year.
That’s one things that Emergency Department do. It’s really a social biopsy of the community if you will. Denver was very excited.
Dr. Lisa: You came by your interest in LifeFlight, and public health, and emergency medicine and transport Tom. There are very interesting in circuitous route, you’ve been a musician, you have been a Montessori school teacher, you’ve been a fellow and I believe public policy across the ocean, you’ve owned your own company, I mean you’ve been everywhere, and this has brought you here doing this.
Tom: Well it’s funny how so well. I came to Maine with what I owned on my back, hitchhike into the state for a summer job, was going to be here for summer, and actually was here for the summer, and then I went back to school, then was somewhere else and got a thing saying will you come back and work this next summer, it sort of … People they brought me back. It is not something I sort of ever planned on.
I got involved in the local volunteer rescue in St. George been there, this is our 65th year, 60th year of service to the community of St. George, remarkable people. Sort of one thing led to the other. Because it’s like why this isn’t work right, and I own a construction company, and we’re trying to get insurance for our employees and we’re having a really hard time, we’re like, we want to buy insurance for our employees and we can’t buy the insurance, so what’s wrong.
I got on the hospital board at Pen Bay, and it was like I just needed to understand more about trying to … How do we get a better system because I think that as Norm has said, the individuals make a difference, and individuals must make a difference every day, we have to go and do our jobs to make a difference. Ultimately, it’s the individuals working together, and the big picture that’s the health care system.
There’s little bit of this, I had gone off to Ireland and spent a year in Ireland, and was teaching for the National Ambulance Training School, then was back here, and literally over dinner one night with one of a close mentor, and of our customers of the building company and he just said, “We love you as a builder, but the world can’t afford for you to build any more houses.” I want you to do this, and ended up in the UK.
By that time, it was already kind of leading the ambulance system in Bangor and had started working with Norm, and Eric Steele, and went across and spent a year in the design of the system in the UK for emergency services, and had come back and they’re were like, “We need LifeFlight built, so build it.” I was like “Okay, this would be another adventure.” Has been luckily just with an extraordinary group of people, it’s been a great adventure.
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By doing the work, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. I remember the effort required to teach kids about the real applications of math, and money out on academy in the mountains of Western Maine. Even the kids knew that there was more I wanted to do with my life. I know that I wouldn’t be where I am, if it weren’t for all of my experiences in life. They are not highs and lows, they are the foundation on which we continue to build.
Today I do the dishes, cut the grass, paint the house, make the popcorn, shop at the deli, drink the beer, and invest the money. These things I do because I accept that hard work is part of life, and knowing that to be the case, we just get on with it, we can come back and enjoy our free time with family and friends. Money makes a lot of this possible, to learn more, like us on Facebook, or go to www.shepardfinancialmaine.com. We want to help you evolve with your money.
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Dr. Lisa: In conversations that I had with patients who had been helped by LifeFlight one of the things that came up was the way that the members of LifeFlight, the paramedics, the pilots, the nurses, dealt with family members. It wasn’t just about the patient, it was about the patient as a member of their family, as a member of the greater fabric. This was very impressive, and very important.
Male: I think it’s health care providers that with the pressure, the economic pressures on health care and through put, and we boom, boom, boom. I was just at a meeting, and it’s all about Toyota production strategies, and yes we have to be incredibly economically efficient. The end of the day, this is always about people, and try to have this be kind of … We have all this policies and if I stretched out, and get narrow down to three.
Right stolen from the US Army, every day when you come to work be all you can be. Second treat every patient as if they were your mother. The most person in your life, and if that’s not good enough, as if they were my mother, because that makes big deal to me. Third when all is feel free to think, always an option and it won’t always be graceful, but you’ll get to the right place, I think it’s incredibly important for our people that this isn’t … That when disease strikes somebody, it strikes an individual.
The family lives through it and I think over the years, to go back and get letters from patients or the pictures of here this two kids. These kids wouldn’t be here, if I haven’t treated by LifeFlight, here’s a picture, all of this, is always as about the entire if we’re going to have the threads of a community, and I was … They’re certainly in all the news, it was a horrible car accident and poor Clyde last summer.
I was kind of the second arriving paramedic on the volunteer rescue, that accident just totally disrupted our entire community, and you had tragedy, you have a little boy dead, you have people critically injured, and it just ripped at our community and our job is to isn’t that we’re just taking care of this patient, or taking care of this family, or taking care of this community.
Dr. Lisa: Been a doctor for a little while now, I don’t want to say how many years, in case you’re sensitive to your age.
Male: Not at all, I’m actually 67 and graduated for medical school in 1972.
Dr. Lisa: All right so you and my dad are roughly the same age. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of changes, how have you been able to maintain a positive perspective about medicine, and also really understand and practice on a daily basis the types of medicine that enables you to have ongoing good quality relationships with patients, and other members of the medical and health care team.
Male: It’s a great question, I think that the goal for any individual it’s yourself as a physician is to maintain a certain equipoise and to have and develop an emotional intellectual behavioral ethical gyroscope. Despite the buffeting and the vicissitudes of life that you can kind of chart a course forward that is meaningful. I think one of the ways I think to maintain that professional viability if you will is to maintain allegiance to those core principles in terms of intimacy and respect and dignity.
I think on a another basis, if you can do meaningful work, keep things eclectic, place yourself in proximity to role models, to emulate and capture an element of a childhood fantasy on a daily basis. You tap into this geothermal well spring of emotional energy that we all have within us in that brings from a child. Basically reflects curiosity about the human condition and the desire to if you will make things better, and have affection for your fellow human beings.
I think that what keeps us going, and propels us forward. I think if that curiosity goes away or the affection, the gift of affection has been written about previously as one of the distinguishing features of physicians but not solo for them, or not alone with them. If that gift of affection goes away, and the curiosity goes away then I won’t be able to practice anymore, I think that’s intrinsic to giving me the energy to move forward.
Dr. Lisa: The reason I brought up my father is because he graduated from medical school a year before you did, he’s been in family medicine for the same number of years that you’ve been practicing and I see the same thing from him, you know his ongoing dedication and the same thing that you’ve described as sort of understanding the importance of the relationship. What struck most about what you just said was the thing about finding this childhood passion, and you use to go out and you use to watch the ambulances go by, when you were in New York, you use to go out and watch the helicopters and the airplanes overhead.
Dr. Dinerman: I’m afraid much to this agreeing with my parents, I wind up going out to LaGuardia with a little bag of lunch probably when I was 9 or 10 years of age, and just watching airplanes. I think for myself, not uniquely, but I think for myself the kinetics of movement of motion, both physically and intellectually have always been very captivating to me. I think that what we found in Maine is again a crucible for this creativity.
Buoy bay is a resources that we can draw up on to enable creativity to thrive and to create something that is meaningful, that sustains us professionally speaking.
Tom: Then when my wife needs to buy a new car, I just send her to Norm, who’s a ultimately gear head and can differ the last 14 years of consumer reports, and the quality of cars to do things, it’s like these other little pieces. He was a musician as well, he was a drummer in a rock band.
Dr. Lisa: Somehow I’m not surprise by that, I could totally see the two of you as musicians and doing your things. I appreciate you’re coming in and talking to us today, talking to me for the LifeFlight piece which will be in the June Maine magazine. People can look up LifeFlight on the web, Tom the website for LifeFlight is …
Tom: www.LifeFlightmaine.org, one word LifeFlightmaine.org.
Dr. Lisa: Really thinking about is, as listeners who are kind of contemplating our conversation, it may not be that you may not think that you are ever going to need Lifelight, but who really knows. It’s kind of good to look into what you don’t need right now.
Tom: The entire 911 system, whoever … No one gets up in the morning, planning to have a heart attack. This is we really need to remember this. This is an incredible promise that is carried on the shoulders of many people that people don’t know. I mean we did it back when we were in the regulatory board together in Maine Mass many years ago. We did a Chris [Pat Holme 00:24:23] did a study for the state.
About what people knew the MS system, and I think it’s still the same today, they basically have no idea who the people are, they have no idea who they … Where they come from, they have no idea how they get paid, but they do know that they can trust them, and they do know that they can let them into their lives and that’s … It’s every day, it’s … We have to … I remember their promise.
Dr. Lisa: I think it’s a promise that we could backup financially, as you’ve said there’s only so many dollars that were out there, what you do is very important work, I know it’s hard to say to people, we’re worthy of your donation, but if there ever was an organization in state of Maine that has touched so many people in so many different ways, it’s a worthy of that type of support, I think it’s probably LifeFlight.
Tom: Maine was the last state in the country to get in air medical system. We were in 1998, we were the only state in the country without an air medical system. In 2008, we were named the top program in all of North America. Lot of hard work by lots of people to get that. It is a charity, and the reason that it was … That we didn’t have a system was really because the economics of Maine how do you do this, and it was an incredible puzzle that a bunch of health care readers and physicians figured out how to start the puzzle.
Absolutely there’s all kinds of things that we do, that when we put an isolette, a specialized isolette on the aircraft that we could never make a cost case for that. When you isolette that we could never make a cost case for that. When you need it, you actually need that piece of medical equipment and similar to the aircraft. At the end of the day, yes we’re a charitable foundation supports making sure that this is here today, and tomorrow.
Dr. Lisa: I appreciate you both coming in today, and also appreciate the work that you do. Keep it up, keep up what you’re doing, keep whatever it is that keeps you so passionate about LifeFlight, you’ve been speaking with Tom Judge the executive director and Dr. Norm Dinerman the medical director of LifeFlight. Thanks for being with us today.
Dr. Dinerman: Thank you so much for the honor.