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Washington County Health System
  
  What It Takes To Be a Trauma Surgeon

 

 
 
Marc E. Kross, MD, PhD, FACS

The job description isn’t for the faint of heart.

You must like long, irregular hours, work nights and holidays, and submit to a pager buzzing endlessly. You must enjoy managing complex patient injuries when a patient’s life is hanging in the balance, prioritize diagnostic studies and surgeries and design patient treatment plans—all with the goal of rehabilitating the patient back to a full recovery. You must also commit to four years of medical school, a five-year general surgery residency, and a two-year trauma surgery or critical care fellowship.

Washington County Hospital's trauma surgeon, Marc Kross, MD revels in his work. He has kept the post of trauma surgeon since 1982. “The physiology of trauma or sustaining a sudden insult to physiology holds great interest to me,” said Dr. Kross. In the world of trauma medicine, sustaining a sudden insult means physical trauma caused by impact, injury or physical attack. To put it simply, Dr. Kross likes understanding how to repair organ and tissue function when they are suddenly injured.

For many trauma surgeons, thirty-six hours of taking call, erratic sleep routines and time away from family gets to be too much. In fact, many physicians leave the trauma field just after ten years. For Dr. Kross, trauma surgery is a sense of duty. “I do about eighty percent of the trauma admissions.” Dr. Kross admitted that he hates missing admissions.

“We’ve got everything right now—gunshot wounds, stabbing, multiple rib fracture, blunt force trauma to the abdomen,” he explained. Unlike the king’s men in the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme, Dr. Kross knows how to put trauma victims back together again. “I like the challenge of restoring the patient back to his normal lifestyle.” But Dr. Kross also acknowledges that trauma surgeons have feelings. “To be a good trauma surgeon, you must have compassion for those whose lives have been dramatically altered in a split second.”

Like any leader, he understands the importance of a highly functional team. He stands side-by-side with nurses, medical professionals and the hospital’s administration—all committed to Washington County Hospital’s trauma program. They take pride in providing the highest quality care to patients at all hours of the night.

 
 
Karl P. Riggle, MD, FACS

“Our trauma program has driven us to be a medical center rather than just a community hospital,” said Karl Riggle, MD, medical director of the trauma department. Washington County Hospital became a designated trauma center on January 2, 1980, and for thirty years, it has provided around-the-clock care to more than 17,000 patients. Dr. Riggle credits the trauma program’s success to the quality of nurses found in the emergency department, critical care unit, surgical floor as well as the supporting cast found in the laboratory, blood bank and radiology.

Dr. Riggle has been a trauma surgeon for twenty years. “It’s part of what I do,” says Dr. Riggle. “I’m more comfortable with acute circumstances.” He believes it makes him a better surgeon. Dr. Riggle is also the “QA” (quality assurance) man of trauma. His exacting character is the driving force behind the processes designed to care for emergent patients, the analysis of survival rates and patient response times—and continuous improvement.

Dr. Riggle became medical director of the trauma program eight years ago. “I was continually worried that someone would get hurt and there wouldn’t be a place to care for the patient,” recalls Dr. Riggle. “There’s a mountain between us and the big cities. Your chances of survival are much better at a trauma center than at a community hospital,” says Dr. Riggle.

Both Dr. Riggle and Dr. Kross possess an inward desire to do one’s best—reflective of their high standards for the trauma program. Their honorable and worthy cause is service to the community—a service that may come in the form of a 2:00 am motor vehicle accident, on I-70 with South Mountain in the rearview mirror.

 

© 2009
Washington County Health System
251 East Antietam Street
Hagerstown, MD 21740
301-790-8000

TDD: 1-800-735-2258
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