Tillamook County General Hospital

Earthquake calls Oregon physicians back to Haiti

Dr. Matt Turney, of Tillamook Emergency Services, treats a young patient in Haiti two weeks after the January earthquake. See Dr. Turney's photo gallery

On January 12, an earthquake struck 15 miles west southwest of Port au Prince, the capital of Haiti. At a magnitude of 7.0, the earthquake devastated a country already under enormous strain as the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere. More than 220,000 Haitians died, another 300,000 were injured and 1.1 million displaced.

On February 27, an even more massive temblor struck just off the coast of Chile. With their long tradition of preparedness and better economy, Chileans were comparatively better off that Haiti. Still, hundreds died.

On news of these disasters, doctors, nurses, and other emergency responders in the United States and around the world began preparing to leave comfortable homes to provide help. This is one story.

Gene McColgin, MD, Tillamook Emergency Services photo by Jerry Rhodes

“It was a very tough trip,” says Gene McColgin, MD, an emergency care physician at Tillamook County General Hospital, who left for Haiti on a medical mission February 23. “It was hard to get around, it was hard emotionally, also, to see the devastation.

“‘Tent city’ is too polite a word,” he says. “Some NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have set up real tent cities, but they will turn into muddy quagmires. And those not in the tents are under cardboard or sheets of cloth.”

While some of the smaller villages are well organized and clean, the capital city of Port au Prince is “a hellish place. Fires are burning buildings, garbage, corpses. You cannot only see it, you can taste it.”

A tough trip, but it wasn’t the first for Dr. McColgin and probably not the last. And not the first or last for many of his colleagues as well.

Although it sits in the point-blank sights of another major earthquake zone, by its small-town nature the Oregon Coast doesn’t seem like a major supplier of medical personnel for international disaster relief. But over the years Adventist Health’s Tillamook County General Hospital has contributed far more to these efforts than appearances or its small-city location would suggest.

“I can’t think of a physician who has not gone on a mission like this,” says Matt Turney, MD, an emergency department physician who returned from Haiti in mid February. Dr. McColgin and CEO Larry Davy can’t either.

For Dr. McColgin, his mission in the wake of the earthquake was a return to a place he’s visited annually since 2006. He’s even set up a nonprofit, VM Foundation, to help raise funds and supplies for the missions.

The team’s airline tickets had been purchased months before the earthquake. They kept to their schedule, but brought more supplies for wound treatment than usual. And rather than setting up an independent clinic as they usually do, they worked within the medical infrastructure that’s grown in response to the quake.

But Dr. McColgin says the story in Tillamook is not just about the effort of a couple of doctors, who are but a few among the hundreds and thousands who have volunteered from across the state, the country and the world. The real story in Tillamook, he says, is the commitment of this small-town hospital to support medical mission work.

“The medical community here and the community in general, including the hospital, is very mission oriented,” Dr. McColgin says.

“They have a wonderful spirit, and it’s not by accident. It comes from the top down. When they know I’m going on a medical mission, they always ask me, ‘What do you need?’”

Tillamook County General Hospital is a 25-bed Critical Access Hospital staffed by 103 physicians, 340 employees and 100 volunteers. Since 1973, it’s been operated by Adventist Health.

The hospital’s support for doctors and staff members traveling abroad to provide medical help is an important part of the overall system, says Larry Davy, RN, MBA, the hospital’s president and CEO. Adventist Health is a faith-based institution, but the commitment from the physicians includes both those who profess faith and those who do not.

“Adventist Health has a long tradition, dating back to the 1800s, of not just working with their communities, but the bigger world picture,” he says.

“We’ve really tried to be flexible in providing resources. Some staff who don’t have vacation time to go, we’ve supplemented and done some things to make sure they could go as part of that bigger world service. It’s not just about here in Tillamook. It’s about greater world needs.”

More of Larry Davy’s comments are available on video.

But the benefits do flow back to Tillamook. Larry Davy and Matt Turney agree with Gene McColgin’s observation that mission trips bring something from within the doctors and nurses, inspired by the patients they’ve seen.
When he comes home, Dr. McColgin finds that he is more patient, a lesson learned from the Haitians he’s treated.

“The patients and the patience they have are unbelievable,” he says. “They will wait all day in the sun, and are grateful for what we can do. It’s humbling. It’s very humbling.”

And that affects how you relate to others and your work when you come home, Dr. McColgin says.

“People recognize the change, especially the first few times you come back because there is a different sparkle in your eye, there is a different tone in your voice,” he says. “There is a different way you receive people and listen to their cares. And I think there is a different way that you communicate with them.”

• Dr. McColgin’s Haiti commitment was described in The Daily Astorian.

The Haiti Earthquake: 12 days later

Dr. Matt Turney, emergency department physician at Tillamook County General Hospital, was among the second wave of medical personnel to arrive in Haiti. He arrived 12 days after the earthquake.

Most of the doctors who treated the major trauma cases had arrived within a day or two of the quake. Still, there was—and is—a great deal of work to do.

Dr. Turney worked in a clinic set up in an area north of the Port au Prince International Airport that had not been hit as hard by the quake, with perhaps 90 percent of the houses still standing.

“The problem was, it took a two-and-a-half-hour car ride to get to where the hospitals are,” he says. “There were people out there who had never seen a physician.”

By his estimate, the group saved about 28 people from what could have been life-threatening complications, had they not been treated.

Many others were spared crippling injury.

Dr. Turney cites one particular case that had a satisfying outcome. In his photos, he points to a bright-eyed youngster giving a thumbs up from a cot. He’d suffered a posterior hip dislocation in the earthquake.

“It’s supposed to be fixed within 6 hours,” Dr. Turney says. “Here it was 12 days later and this little boy shows up.”

The work would have been difficult in a hospital emergency room, yet they had none. In a Cuban hospital without supplies, using improvised traction and the anesthesia that was not ideal but happened to be available, Dr. Turney and his colleagues repaired the injury.

“It was a choice between him being a cripple all his life, or being able to walk again,” Dr. Turney says. “By the end of the week, he was able to walk.”

• Dr. Turney talks more about his experience on video.
• See Dr. Turney's photos.

Missions abroad benefit physicians and their home-town patients

“It’s marvelous to see them change.”

He’s seen it so many times now, that Dr. Gene McColgin no longer is surprised at the affect of short-term medical missions on the medical personnel. But he still marvels.

Each person, whether going to Haiti or India or Africa or wherever, goes through the same transformation, he says.

“I love the first time I bring someone on a mission and watch them go through these stages,” Dr. McColgin says.

“At first you think it’s hopeless: ‘It’s like stopping the sea from coming in. I can’t do this.’ Then you see resignation. Then you see a calmness settle on them, and they become more aware of what’s going on around them, and they start taking in that joy, that spirit of humanity around them.

“You feel so rewarded that you feel guilty,” he says.

“If I could do anything, I would have everyone participate in that, especially when they are young, as teenagers, because it will change your life,” he says.

“It will make your outlook different. It will make you humble. And it will make you thankful. And it will make you realize that you are a member of the family of God, not just of a community.

• Dr. McColgin talks more on video about how the experience of providing medical care overseas affects every volunteer.

Tillamook physician Rex Parsons will go to Haiti this spring. Drs. Parsons and McColgin both will return to Haiti this fall.