This Rural Mission is a podcast brought to you by Michigan
State University College of Human Medicine, the Herbert H. and
Grace A. Dow Foundation, and the Michigan State University College
of Human Medicine Family Medicine Department. We are so excited to
bring you Season Three. I'm your host, Julia Terhune, and I hope
you enjoy this episode.
When I first started this job, I was overcome
with the needs of rural communities and the wonderful things that
doctors get to do in their professions. I was, I guess you could
say, fangirling a little about rural doctors. And I told my spouse
that this was really what I wanted to do, that I think I wanted to
be a doctor. So I had it all figured out. I was going to go to
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. I was going to
do the TIP program at the Midland Family Medicine Residency, and
then when it was all said and done, I was going to set up a
practice with Scheurer Hospital in the Thumb.
Now, I have to tell you two very important
things that came out of this conversation with my spouse. One, he
instantly reminded me that I can barely handle a paper cut, let
alone a surgery rotation, and he also reminded me that I would
hysterically cry before every anatomy, biology, physiology and
chemistry test that I took in college. He also reminded me that my
GRE examination for grad school almost killed me with stress, so
medical school is not in my future and I will stick to making rural
doctors out of the likes of all of you.
But one subtle thing that also came out of this
conversation was how much I love the Thumb community. Prior to
starting with the College of Human Medicine I had never even been
to the Thumb, but after six years of working with the Scheurer
Hospital and the health departments and other agencies in these
communities, I am smitten. I love the people from the Thumb. I love
the history, I love the coastline, I love these communities. A
story, not unlike many of our medical students, including Shelby
Walker.
Yeah, so when I found out I would be going to
Pigeon, I had never been there before. I don't think I had ever
been to the actual Thumb before, maybe close to it but I don't
think it was within what they count as the Thumb. And so I had my
boyfriend at the time drive me out there just so I could see where
I'd be going. So I thought it would make me feel a little bit more
comfortable, and we got there and everything was so small. It was
such a small town that I almost didn't believe that there was a
hospital and a health system there that could especially
accommodate students, so it was kind of an odd like, "What am I
going to do for two years with a lot of time out in Pigeon?" It was
a very odd feeling.
And so when we started, my first rotation of
third year actually started in the Scheurer Health system with Dr.
Scaddan in Sebewaing, and everyone was so welcoming and nice, and
who let me do things, which as a third year medical student I was
like, "Wait, am I qualified to do actual things?" And I think I had
so many unique experiences out there because of where I was at.
With Dr. Scaddan I got to be introduced to the ER, maybe a little
bit earlier, and their definition of an ER was not what I had seen
in the past but they still had some pretty intense situations and
things that really were true emergencies that maybe you wouldn't
expect in the middle of nowhere in, I think, a five-bed ER
situation.
We went to the prison to do some healthcare
with the inmates. That was an interesting experience that I wasn't
really expecting when I had first pulled up into Pigeon. And from
there I got to meet so many other amazing physicians and EPPs and
just everyone there has been so nice [inaudible 00:05:05] Oh gosh,
the administrative staff knows who you are when you show up to
their meetings in the morning, because the physicians invite you to
go with them to all of these meetings that you feel like you have
no business really knowing what's going on, but they bring you to
these meetings and the administration staff, they know who you are.
They ask how you're doing, they asked how you're liking it. It was
such an odd thing to, I guess, stumble into kind of on accident.
I'm really grateful that I got that chance.
And if that's not enough anecdotal evidence to
prove that Pigeon will win you over, well listen to
this.
So I was talking to Chad about this, and then
with Dr. Wendling actually, how odd this all turned out that I
didn't want to go to Pigeon and I wanted to go to [Alma 00:05:57]
and then I was like, "Okay, I'll do the nice thing." And Chad and I
got engaged in Caseville. We went to Caseville on the
beach.
Our rural medical affiliation with the Scheurer
Hospital network didn't start just six years ago. We have a much
longer history with the hospital and have been training students in
Pigeon for more than 20 years. I sat down with the former CEO,
Dwight Gascho, and the current CEO, Terry Lerash, who served and
serve the Scheurer Health Network and learned just how it all got
started.
Well, interesting story. I was working in
Saginaw. I had a good position, felt satisfied, but my wife and I
were on a Saturday afternoon or morning, we were standing in a
field on an Amish farm in Gaylord or near Gaylord attending a
wedding of a daughter of my CFO at the time, a guy that worked with
me over many, many years. We were good friends so we got invited to
the wedding and we're standing in this field and across the field
walks Dwight and Theresa. And we had known each other for some
time, Dwight and I had, probably over the last 20 years,
involvement in hospital council, and health care executives, it's a
pretty small circle in the State of Michigan. Most of us know each
other.
Anyways, I said hello to Dwight. He says hello
to me, and I said to Dwayne, "Well, I hear you are interested in
retiring," and Dwight said, "Yes, I am. Would you like my job?" And
I was a little bit stunned. Said, "Well, geez, I don't know." My
wife was looking at me weird and I said, "Well, are you serious?"
And he says, "Absolutely am serious." And he said, "Why don't you
do me a favor? Why don't you come to Pigeon and just visit with me
for a day? That's all I'm asking. No commitment, no strings
attached, just come up and visit with me for a day."
And out of our friendship, I said, "Okay, I can
do that. I can spare a day and run up to Pigeon. This is my old
stomping ground anyways. I was born and raised in Bad Axe." So I
had been away for probably 40 plus years from my hometown of Bad Ax
and it was a chance for me to just get reacquainted with Huron
County. So I drove up and I think within the first hour I was so
enchanted with Scheurer Hospital because of its culture,
friendliness, cleanliness, organization, and clearly Dwight's
leadership was a big plus.
And as I talked with Dwight through the course
of that day and learned more about Scheurer, I understood that the
core values of the organization really matched me, kind of fit my
dress code, if you will. And so I was intrigued and left and then
made a subsequent visit and met with the board and long story
short, here I am and I couldn't be happier. This was really a great
opportunity for me [inaudible 00:09:29]
And as I reflect on that side of the story, my
story would match it almost exactly. I was born and raised in the
Pigeon area. I was on a farm, left for a few years for school and
the service, et cetera. Came back in 1972 and in 1987, I was
invited to serve on the Scheurer Hospital Board of Trustees. And we
were having some issues at the time, and in 1990, the board asked
if I would take the leadership position in the hospital as the CEO.
And I agreed to do that on an interim basis saying, "I'll give it a
shot, but if it doesn't work maybe I could help find the next
leader." Well, after just a matter of a few months, the board took
the interim assignment away and gave me the full-time assignment
and so I worked here from 1990 until July of 2016, 26 years
plus.
Obviously the hospital was struggling early
on. The hospital became more profitable as years went by. We became
more successful at recruiting young physicians. And there had been
a gentlemen that had served on the board by the name of Loren
Gettel. Loren Gettel was a farmer in this area and had a very
strong interest in seeing students find opportunities to train in
some rural community, and he put that bug in my ear. As a matter of
fact, Julie, when I was being asked to serve, Loren asked the board
chair if he could spend a day with me. And I'm fully aware of what
it was. It was part of a program to see once if I passed the exam,
so I think I was being vetted by Loren Gettel.
So we jumped in the car. We drove to MSU and
we walked the campus of MSU. He's a very, very strong MSU campaign
leader. I mean, he loves that organization. He was grinning away.
And he showed me places that were memorable to him and he showed me
plaques on walls where he had made contributions to the
organization and he said, "Dwight, some how, some way we have got
to find ways to introduce medical students to rural communities
because I've lived in a rural community all my life." This is Loren
speaking, "And candidly, it's a great place to live. It's a great
place to raise kids and we've got great schools, great churches.
There's all sorts of things that you can do around here and we've
got to find ways to do this."
And that was something he just kept putting
into my head. Unfortunately, he passed away from cancer just few
years after I became CEO here in 1990 but his daughter, Peggy
McCormick, continues to serve on the board of directors and she has
a very similar burning desire to see some sort of a relationship
with rural communities.
The Loren Gettel scholarship is a scholarship
that our rural medical education students are still receiving
today. And in fact, since 2010, 11 students have received this
scholarship including Dan Drake who you heard just a few seasons
ago and is going to be returning to the Thumb for practice in just
a few short months.
Terry was not a hospital CEO, but he was
running an organization at the time that was an important part of
the whole council and that's was Synergy Medical Educational
Alliance.
So I was, quite frankly, offering to the
hospital council opportunities for them to perhaps have students in
their communities and in their hospitals, if they were able to
provide the right types of resources. Well, after that hospital
council meeting, I had two calls. One of them was from Dwight, in
fact he was the first one that called me. And I think he probably
was reflecting on Loren's message to him, and saw this was a great
opportunity and so he called me and he asked if we could talk more
about becoming a MSU student site. And so we worked through all the
details. I can't remember all the details involved, but I remember
driving two students up here and one of them was by the name of
Kimiko Sugimoto. And she is now a general surgeon who actually
completed the MSU rotation, her general surgery rotation in
Saginaw, and is practicing in Saginaw as a general surgeon as we
speak.
But she was one of the first students to come
to Pigeon, and Dwight was so gracious in entertaining them and took
them to board meetings and got them involved and connected with all
sorts of things here at the hospital and they had a wonderful
experience. And I can't even remember what the length of the
rotation was but I know your physicians got involved
in-
It was actually a little longer than what it
was supposed to be. It just stretched out. That was a first for
them and a first for us, and so we were thrilled and enthralled to
have these young students. Of course, they're brilliant kids and
they're so much fun, they're very respectful. I included them in my
leadership meetings and learn from what we were doing. I wanted
them to get as much of an experience in a rural setting as they
possibly could get. So medical staff meetings, board meetings,
leadership meetings, interact with the patients, interact with the
staff, it was all part of it.
And I think that we got raving reviews after
that about their experience in Pigeon 20 years ago. And so I look
at Scheurer Hospital as really a teaching hospital, and so we've
built that culture. We, meaning Dwight, for many, many years, and
me most recently, built a culture of a teaching organization and I
think that started 20 years ago with Dr. Sugimoto, actually, as
that first student.
That involvement with the leadership at our
rural hospitals is one of the pillars of our rural medical
education certificate, one that really lands with students and
makes an impact. Pigeon makes a place for aspiring rural medical
doctors, a place where people can come back and grow. People like
Elizabeth and our recent graduate, Evan. Elizabeth is a native of
Cass City who, when I interviewed her, was planning to go back to
the Thumb for her medical education and now is halfway through her
third year of medical schooling. Evan recently graduated medical
school and is completing an internal medicine residency in
Detroit.
Yeah, I am super excited to go back. I
recently had the opportunity to shadow at Scheurer and had some
downtime and was able to go back down to the floor and see a lot of
the nurses and the nurses aides that I worked with, and it just
made me even more excited to go back there and be back with that
group of people and in that environment and continue my education
there. And I think it's really important if you eventually want to
serve in a rural area to see how rural medicine is different. I can
tell you, I had my adult wards rotation for second year at Sparrow
this morning and it's way different. It's a different environment,
there's different types of cases, so I'm excited about
that.
I'm excited to develop those relationships
that you get to develop in rural areas that you don't get so much
in bigger hospitals, relationships with patients and relationships
with colleagues, other physicians, other employees in the hospital.
I'm really excited to be a part of that and just be a part of that
group and that kind of close knit community again.
I think the thing that's going to stick with
me is that the sort of idealized version of a physician or what a
doctor could be, sort of that dream, is still alive in a lot of
places. I think a lot of times we get down on what medicine is
becoming or has become or how it's changing and how the role of the
physician is changing, and maybe it's not what we had thought. You
know, a country doctor making house visits, knowing all their
patients, delivering babies and doing minor surgeries and really
being that do-it-all type of doctor who's also involved in their
community, who's also a community leader. We don't see that as much
anymore, I think, especially in bigger cities.
But having that experience in a rural
community shows me that it's still possible. I've met plenty of
physicians who were that do-it-all type of person. They were in
covering shifts in the ED in the night and then in the morning they
were in their clinic and after that they were on the board of the
hospital and they still made it to their kids' sports games where
they were the sports medicine physician there, and they were on the
Rotary Club board as well. I mean, they were just in every facet of
their community, being that leader and being that physician and
everybody knew them.
And so I think it gives me inspiration that I
can be the type of physician some day that I think I always wanted
to be, or I was always really intrigued by. And I think that's a
really great image and vision to sort of hold onto as you go
through your training and ultimately look at how you want to set up
your practice in life and where you want to end up.
I am proud and MSU is proud of our partnership
with the Scheurer Hospital system and all of the hospitals, clinics
and health departments that we get to work with in the Thumb
region. All of these places have significantly contributed to our
students' rural medical education, places like Hills & Dales
Hospital in Cass City, McKenzie Health System in Sandusky, the
Harbor Beach Community Hospital, and the Huron County, Tuscola
County and Sanilac County Health Departments have all been taking
our students for many years. The leaders of all of these facilities
have become our friends and have taken on so much for our students.
I can't even begin to thank them. They have provided not only a
place for medical education during regular times and pandemic
times, but they've been mentors and leaders that have provided
students with perspectives they wouldn't have gotten anywhere
else.
On top of that, they have constantly supported
our program, our Pipeline program, and even things like this
podcast. They have gone above and beyond to be so much more than
just medical education partners and I think that that's one of the
most important things about rural medical education is that you
can't walk into a rural educational environment and not leave with
family, friends and a brand new community. So we love Scheurer, we
love the Thumb, but what do those who receive care from Scheurer
think? I spoke to Lynn and Abby who not only receive medical care
from Scheurer Health professionals, but are also
employees.
The more we grow, it gives the community
another option and they're like, "Oh, well, oh, they can do that
there. Okay, well, I'm going to go there then or request services
there."
It goes back to not being a number. Really,
everywhere that you go here, they know you. They know your family,
they know something about you, and they built a Meijer in Bad Axe
that opened in July [crosstalk 00:21:40] We've got a clinic in
there and things that can't get handled there, they can do at the
Bad Axe site, and if they can't do it at the Bad Axe site they can
send them to Pigeon. So it's all within... What is it? We have
something within 12 miles of each other always.
Thank you for listening to this podcast. I
want to thank Dwight and Terry for taking time to speak with me,
along with Shelby, Liz, Evan, Lynn, and Abby for their
contributions to this episode. As always, thank you to Dr. Wendling
for making this podcast a priority. I love getting the opportunity
to hear and tell these stories. Also, Dr. Wendling, herself, is
from the Thumb just adding more proof to the theory that some of
the best doctors come from the pollex, the scientific term for
Thumb. See, I learned something in anatomy. The Thumb is a
wonderful place, a place where you can really make rural your
mission.