Remarkable People: Making a Difference in the Northwest; Interview with Michael Copass, Tape 23

lewis to kind of location we don't know as you address the donor registries can see our houses and i'm not sure it matters that much that i assume you like to go over there yeah so we were in there you feel very much at all of a fire you know you train as her mistakes or something doesn't it in some years a hole in all of it sometimes so like you're an old wharf to make sure that the characters intact i have a circuit that i work and i know from my office to the art and the art of the dramatic one quarters which is now located across so jefferson street from the harbor here and i know my circuit pretty well and maybe one or two other

people not but i and i use it as a as a therapeutic crutch i changed the pace from doing that serve required paperwork of practicing medicine to the stress and chaos of the ear to managing are seeing how the medics were doing each day some days are watching television and television version watching roller ball to listening to npr and some days it's jeopardy and some days it's an intense discussion for the fisher best but a source of discussion of something other than others they and i get along in a balance of tension which could be akin to taking a dog in a calico cat me to discover characters and reach of the servers possibilities and just as i put pressure on them they put pressure on me so i disappear in order to get revitalize for lack of a better term it's atomic satanic of an

entirely different relationship i see them as extensions of abbas the er and particularly physicians in the community who practiced medicine and take care of lots of sick people and i would hope that when they're doing what they do that they're well mannered well trained very well trained and very well mannered and as anonymous is anybody ought to be coming in your house and pick up the phone and online on one you want somebody in your home knows exactly what to do for the person in distress and that's what i would hope that they are now i don't know that i care whether they're pink or blue or green or wear white coats and blue pants or goats and white pants i just want them to be able to do what a doctor would do if you were there and i was a good doctor so from the point of view of needing that battery charge i like an award make their rounds work the tables change the tension comeback and over again i do that every day some people say i can't be found i know exactly where i am they know

exactly where i am thank you to change and i don't think they've made clear basis for that guy he just doesn't know anything about this operation here that the firefighters are the ones that are doing this people come in the fire department motivated by sometimes a desire to have a good job but that that nothing comes later they come into the fire department in order to being a positive force in the community they see themselves as as saving properties with an enormous potential for saving life in this particular part of the world and particularly in the city and they're not only coming to further burdened with the intent and with the realization that they will make a difference and property and they clearly love a lifesaving effect but they come in knowing that's a

part of the fire departments activity is the management of emergency medicine or urgent acute madison madison in the streets the education of these individuals is intense it's as intense and grueling an exercise as i know in medicine other than perhaps the surgical sub specialties where an individual after a period of working in the department and knowing how the seattle fire department and some other departments in the region like every a doorbell to work then enters the medicaid program and we spent three thousand hours we work these guys doubling average workweek serve the average workweek of a physician in order to give them the opportunity to learn medicine at the same time be unafraid of taking care of the sickest people in town when you wish and individuals to fly inexpensive airplane at a high rate of speed twice the speed of sound at the same time be able to find a target and shoot it you've

spent an enormous amount of time stepping him through the little aircraft moderate size aircraft high speed aircraft high performance aircraft flying combat aircraft until you know he can he is able to do that or you spend time teach you how to jump out of a safe airplane and take a village it to slowly insteps this is exactly the same training approach you learn how to work at a working fire from inside the fire and be unafraid of that you learn how to work inside crisis and be unafraid of that so it's an enormous collection of of stress we do this through lectures and we do it through literally an apprenticeship older medics teaching younger monks and the older man it's teaching younger vets are teaching the automatics what we taught them that's how it started dr carson dr kahn's contribution and

genius was to see that you can treat people outside the hospital and that they were going to be treated outside the hostility to be treated by somebody knew exactly what to do when the next evolution came in the collaboration of further education a very wonderful person in al alvarez said we'll train them to the next level and i said well not only should we train we should keep training and we're now on to do other things and we'd elaborated a training program that was now strictly model after medical training program week i took that over and i took over in nineteen seventy five in canada for science and the education of these individuals is that intense it's expensive so not only do we educate them we re educate and not only do we re educate them we retest and we make them less stand as higher standard of review as we possibly can who had it not been for dr khan genius we wouldn't be here he'd wait he's our boss inspiration and quality control so as a whole and

dr prof dr cubs started a medic when he found he'd be built he built an image of care we've just taken that id ian moved in two standard deviations the right thing and that's that's ok cause the nyse we say that that's that workers didn't call me something to the effect that how we stand nationally for instance is there anyone known throughout the nation people come from all over the united states and all over the world to see why this relatively small community with a relatively small fire department does so well with emergency medical services and as a model nationally it's it's it's respected i don't think that anybody in the united states with the exception of king county does as well as the seattle start up in seattle and king county are equally paranoid validate each other

but from the point of view of dying in the city of seattle and being resuscitated you can't do any better you can go to vancouver or chicago or san francisco and have the same likelihood of survival from sudden cardiac death as you do in seattle at the same time you can take that says that educational process that you used to teach them how to resuscitate cardiac arrest and mood and other vineyards from injury to respiratory distress and realize that's exactly the same success more likely that doctors and this is something that you're right yeah you're

saving it easy to start your that and he just ended in the context of the fact i mean there is concern that the public realize that there are people from all lots of like to come into this place you know and so and he asked him why analyst occurs because of a rainy october day in sitka alaska one five children burned up the house and all the doctors in sitka including dr corpus tried to keep these children alive and we spent a substantial part of our time trying to find an airplane to move them to seattle and the surgeon in charge of that evolution was a wonderful person and george martin and i decided that george won a bond never again should have to wait for an airplane or try to find one amazon seller looking

northwest came about to serve george long a bar and tom would end bill atkinson all of the physicians in southeast alaska that works so hard to provide medical care but that could be equally clickable to the doctors in kalispell are most loyal core core lane or one actually ari ackerman who also had the same problem those people living in so called when the site's washington alaska montana idaho medical school says that's what we really are in this medical school one i use an aircraft to serve the people who need to move a rare but unique disease to the city darrell it started with a single trip in a single aircraft a turboprop developed a second airplane spawned a helicopter spawned a second helicopter all of them do the same thing they move critically ill or critically injured individuals from our distance sight to the tertiary

care hospital to serve both the patients community your say what's the patient needs of the communities sometimes needs to win the patient's needs are we the community's ability to provide them the community needs for that mission in the city so anybody gets served by their left party it tends to be a destination resort for the people who were injured but virginia mason reese it's hard so does the university children receives an inordinate number of truly brutally sexual and the whole goal of derelict was to be able to put together a transportation system which functions like thirty it's therapy to move from in short a time as possible from one distance from a long distance or a short distance in the city and it was my hope that we could and it was just a general hope that we can make this a community activity not too different with an attic when we had a four in a different way where they serve basket to pay for itself but the goal of her left was to help the doctor and his community take care of his patient the original meaning of their letters to take care of physicians and distant

places who had major problems to deal with and the way to move the patient away to come from alaska political frankly own mother and the driver is a major airline and the idea was to provide an excellent or closed excellent therapy namely the airplane to move the patient as expeditiously what part that i haven't i decided that the physicians in alaska they need a way to find an airplane ever again so from the point of you try to put it together and make it happened i probably talked as much as anybody are you really a hobby not

what this narrow decision all just excited about the fact that what the special what is special areas that you were able to secure the trauma center and therefore you get people from all sorts of like something to screen out there we have with people who come and the harbor view who need five or six different kinds of doctoral work at the same time it's like bowling a very high powered automobile or a custom making a car we customize their response to disease so the genius of this institution has many different walks of medicine participate simultaneously i say gee they're all young kids are just the juniors well they're the juniors who do this over and over and over over over again until they get it automatically lots of medical education is all about the value of hardware to the person was robert hall's bio for cleo creation

mill creek is that there's a facility in town that can do everything that it needs to do that one time for a person who has many different divisions of his body at risk the brain division the heart division the mosul the vision the bone division all those divisions to be brought together it's this is to apply for humpty dumpty gets put back together and we ought to pick up the faucet could become helpless and fear that has got to drive fifty miles an hour a night know the guy's there it maybe gender but he knows exactly what to do because usually doesn't take too much effort but the value for review to the community is all of the disciplines work simultaneously dc to riyadh you know i would say it's

the people from incredible variations come near the fire chief in juneau alaska the war world are no differently than an individual driving a truck or to work in a lot of pollen the north bender no different than an individual in fact it's a respectable owner of property in the mortuary this is a hospital which when you hit the door focuses on disease social circumstances that brought the patient here turned to reflect or require judgment judgment can exist or judgment of the human condition can exist in a place like this what has to be the dominant driver as a disease you let yourself dissolve into thinking that people were valuable laws are useful lives or will do more for this person because then you miss the point you become judge and jury and sometimes executioner and that's not the name of the game for the game to game up was like this is once you get the door richard disease this the issue

is ok yes this is serious how hard however view is a training facility for the average tuition school of medicine it's a sister institutions just like the university hospital it's not the university hospital but it is houses faculty teaches residents and teaches medical students are you they got some pictures of you in the mountains and get you to talk about the fact that we know that there's a lot of traffic noise out there when you're talking about a state in which you enjoy and you were in the mountains

as a young person you are but now you send your children to a new education too busy year me something that that's something first of all high himalaya mountains have you the law that now you get your children are curious you doing here yeah i look at the olympics and i think she had been over that house are going up that moment like to be there today and i think he will be back to the brothers are theirs now constance or non townsend i think my goodness gracious i came back to this country in order to do that but i can't do it anymore so i have the vicarious thrills sending my kids and they go into the mountains and have a good time and i i've never tried to save something we have to do we've just had a series of activities when the children were probably a late teenager early years of college which were called mike's hike and dr vacations which were an attempt to test all the major bakeries the chinese restaurants and all of them armed groups of the northwest

so far without success if i ascend the chill in office my scouts cause i wind up being on a short leash here it's not often that i get away for long enough to make a difference so i tend to be tethered to the institution and they do this going to work mr vachon last year and then we have handed the city and it's not clear still shots and will come back down to the city so i'm back home or just fb