By Eric Eyre
After the collision, the wail of the siren, the thump of helicopter blades slicing through the air, Dr. Frederic Pollock’s beeper goes off, and he rushes to Charleston Area Medical Center General Hospital where he helps the hospital’s trauma team save lives and limbs.
As chief of CAMC’s new Orthopedic Trauma Group, Pollock fixes shattered pelvises and fractured bones of people seriously injured in motorcycle, car and all-terrain vehicle wrecks all hours of the day and night.
“You’ve got to understand,” Pollock said. “At two in the morning, we’re ready to go. Twenty-four hours a day, trauma surgeons can be attending to life-threatening injuries and ask for orthopedic assistance.”
CAMC formed the bone trauma group in May.
Pollock left a successful orthopedic practice at Bone and Joint Surgeons Inc. in Charleston and joined the hospital full-time.
CAMC gave him office space in the Medical Pavilion beside General Hospital. He has hired a physician’s assistant and two medical staff members.
By next year, he plans to add at least three full-time bone trauma doctors to help cover emergencies, seven days a week, 24 hours a day at CAMC.
Meantime, Pollock has found temporary doctors – all with military backgrounds and extensive experience in orthopedic trauma – to fill in.
“It’s only a success if we can attract orthopedic surgeons who want to do trauma,” Pollock said. “We have our little niche here. Our own little world.”
Five years ago, CAMC General’s trauma center was struggling to stay afloat.
The state revoked the hospital’s Level I trauma status – the top grade for trauma certification – in August 2002.
Not enough bone surgeons were available to take emergency calls at the trauma center. Patients with serious injuries were sent to Huntington or Morgantown.
Within weeks, Pollock rallied a dozen bone surgeons to cover the emergency center. The doctors agreed to take more trauma calls after they were promised medical-malpractice insurance through the state’s Board of Risk and Insurance Management.
Pollock was determined to return Level I status to the trauma center.
“We said, ‘We can do this. We can make it work,'” he recalled. “We needed state support and tort reform.”
A month later, with help from then-Gov. Bob Wise, the hospital regained its Level I status, a designation that it has maintained ever since.
CAMC General is one of only two Level I trauma centers in the state. The other is the Jon Michael Moore Trauma Center at West Virginia University Hospitals in Morgantown.
To receive the designation, hospitals must have a trauma surgeon, emergency doctor, orthopedic surgeon, neurosurgeon and anesthesiologist available immediately day and night.
In the past, CAMC has had a difficult time persuading orthopedic surgeons to provide demanding on-call coverage.
Most bone doctors in the Charleston area already have thriving practices. They have a steady stream of patients who need shoulders fixed, and hips and knees replaced.
“They’re stretched to the limit,” Pollock said.
So the doctor has looked elsewhere for help.
Dr. Michael Charlton, a major in the U.S. Air Force, was between hospital jobs this summer when he spotted an advertisement for a temporary orthopedic trauma doctor at CAMC.
“It was an opportunity to get additional experience and help out at the trauma center,” he said.
Charlton stayed busy from the start.
He performed nearly 50 surgeries during the past month, working 70 to 100 hours a week. CAMC’s bone trauma service is the busiest in the state, with more than 850 surgically treated fractures a year.
The vast majority of patients served at the trauma unit come through CAMC’s three hospital emergency rooms. Other patients transfer from urgent-care centers, such as Health Plus. Some complicated cases are referred to the orthopedic trauma group from local bone doctors.
“It’s challenging,” Charlton said. “They’re complex injuries. Every day is a different day. You never know what’s going to come through the door.”
During his stint at CAMC, Charlton was most struck by the number and severity of ATV accidents.
“These are young people riding these,” he said. “A lot of them are permanently disabled with injuries they sustained on these things. It’s a real problem here.”
Pollock has signed up additional temporary doctors to work at CAMC General’s trauma unit through the fall.
Two of those doctors have served in Iraq, Pollock said. CAMC provides a three-bedroom house in South Charleston during their stay.
The trauma center also now has a small number of Charleston-area orthopedic surgeons in private practice who continue to answer emergency calls.
The orthopedic trauma group has its own suite of offices.
There are exam rooms and lightning-fast digital X-ray equipment that produces high-quality printouts that patients are given to take home. Doctors also can view three-dimensional images of bones in a conference room on a large-screen monitor. CAMC’s operating rooms are just a flight of stairs away.
The set-up will attract top-flight orthopedic trauma surgeons to CAMC, Pollock said. That will ensure that CAMC’s trauma unit maintains its Level I status, providing world-class care to accident victims throughout central and southern West Virginia.
“The most amazing thing is to see people after they recover from their severe injuries and are walking again,” Pollock said. “Mobility is life; life is mobility.”
To contact staff writer Eric Eyre, use e-mail or call 348-4869.
(c) 2007 Charleston Gazette, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Comments