A Medicine Warrior: Dr. David Baines

TC:  Now are you treating both native and non-native tribes?

DB:  Yeah, in fact the vast majority in our residency are not native. There's another native faculty member with me, Shannon Weigand, she's a University of Washington trained doctor and has worked with me at the Seattle Indian Health Board. She grew up in the villages in Alaska, what we call "the bush", which means that there's no access by roads. And then we have an Inupiaq resident. We've graduated three Native doctors in our four classes and we have two really good Native resident applicants this year. We're hoping to get both of those. Our director up there is very interested in getting as many Natives in our program that are interested in family practice.

TC:  Now do you only work from the hospital, or do you actually go to the bush to the clinics and do work as well?

DB:  Well, I would say probably a third of the time I'm seeing my own patients, you know I still see a few patients it's just not anywhere on the level like when I was practicing in rural Idaho. And then I have about 20 percent of my time is administration; I have a certain part of the curriculum of the residency I oversee, and I have to make sure that's flowing OK, and so I have some time to deal with that. And then probably a third of the time I'm precepting residents where I'm available to the residents to come and ask questions and see patients with them if they need to see me or work with them in a procedure clinic where we're doing little minor procedure stuff. And then probably ten percent of the time I work the hospital services.

TC:  Is this an IHS hospital that you work for?

DB:  No, Providence is a Catholic institution, but our residents do about anywhere from 12 to 25 percent of their training in one of the Native sites, either the Native hospital, the Native outpatient clinic in Anchorage, or the bush villages, they do a mandatory six week rotation in Bethel, and during that six week rotation they go to at least on village. And they go in Medevacs to other villages where they go out with the medical team that get a sick or injured patient that has to come in emergently. Then they go out to a village for usually two to four days where they see patients. The village has no doctor or nurse, and so periodically they send out, and they'll go with a physician, a staff physician. I got to do that this summer.