Rural Medicine Elective at St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center in Ketchum, Idaho
Author- Alex Kahweiler PGY3
One amazing aspect of training at ACMC is the three months of elective time built into our curriculum. This allows residents to pursue career interests, explore niche areas of emergency medicine, or gain more experience within EM. Common electives include toxicology, pharmacology, critical care, and resuscitation electives
This year, I was able to travel to Ketchum, Idaho to complete a Rural Medicine elective at St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center. The Wood River Medical Center is a critical access hospital, with 25 inpatient beds, a 10 bed emergency department and no ICU or cath lab; compare this to ACMC, which has 750+ inpatient beds, an emergency department with 70+ beds, including a 20-bed pediatric emergency department, and the most ICU beds in the state of Illinois.
Working at Wood River is completely different than being in the ED at Christ. It is single coverage with very limited specialty back-up. As a result, all critically-ill patients, and many that require specialist evaluation, are transferred. The closest cath lab is approximately a 1.5 hour drive but can be reached by helicopter in 30 minutes and the closest trauma center is approximately a 45 minute helicopter ride or 2.5 hours drive, with clear weather. This makes caring for patients more complicated than at Christ because helicopters cannot fly in snow storms, and drive times are greatly increased. As a result, transfers are common and needed to be incorporated into patient care.
While in Idaho, I learned to make sure that a patient is stable for transport, diagnosing, recognizing and assessing the need for transport, and knowing which patient can instead follow-up as an outpatient were skills I gained. Compare this to ACMC, in which patients are almost never transferred out
On a personal level, being in Idaho was an amazing opportunity for my family and I to explore a new part of the country and play outside on days off. Ketchum, Idaho is an outdoor paradise with incredible hiking, biking, skiing and basically any other outdoor activity you can imagine. I had fun biking to work on a paved bike trail, as well as hiking and camping on days off! See below for some day off pictures for your viewing pleasure…
ACMC Emergency Medicine 