MEMBERS
DR. Who
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT DAN O ' BRIEN, MD
Aaron Burch
Dr. John Joseph O’ Brien’ s office was attached to their home on Long Island. His wife, Mary, worked as his nurse. They had five children, three boys and two girls.
It was the early 1960s. The Space Race was heating up. Patients filled up the O’ Brien family’ s driveway and shuffled in to the waiting room. There, a young Daniel O’ Brien may have been waiting to take their blood pressures with a cardboard sphygmomanometer.“ I remember the positive response I got, pretending to take blood pressures,” Dr. O’ Brien recalled, guessing that he must have been around four or five years old.“ I was really struck by that energy.”
Medicine was omnipresent in the O’ Brien household. It was talk at the dinner table. It was the smell of antiseptic when going to ask Dad a question. It was homework in the car while Dr. O’ Brien made house calls.
Many of the families in that Long Island neighborhood were supported by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, the company responsible for building the Apollo missions’ Lunar Lander. During a Cub Scouts trip, the young Dan O’ Brien visited the Grumman facility where a warehouse floor was completely covered in various stages of assembly.
“ That was the future,” he said.“ If you asked me then what I was going to do, I would have said aerospace. Because I knew that by the mid-80s, people would be living on Mars. It was such a fascinating career path. There was nothing we couldn’ t do.”
Until the day man walked on the moon … Making a giant leap for mankind was‘ mission accomplished’ for the space program, but suddenly the demand for lunar landers vanished and many were laid off.
“ That had a big impact on me choosing a career,” Dr. O’ Brien said.“ People who had been comfortable middle class families were now filled with anxiety. If I became a physician, that wouldn’ t happen to me or my family.”
Dr. O’ Brien finished college at a breakneck pace of three years before attending New York Medical College, which he graduated from in 1981. While attending school, he also took on side jobs as a respiratory therapist and EKG technician, and got his pilot’ s license.
“ One of my roommates took me flying and I thought it was so cool. So, I got mine too. It’ s surprisingly not that difficult. You solo after about 15 hours. There’ s a fair amount of book work but, at some point, it just kind of clicks.”
After medical school, Dr. O’ Brien completed a one year internal medicine internship at the Yale University School of Medicine, but he kept thinking about working in the emergency room.“ That was the area of greatest interest to me,” he recalled.“ I was starting to read about a new emergency medicine specialty. It wasn’ t recognized yet at Yale, but there were about 25 programs around the country. Louisville was one of them.”
Kentucky was a long way from home. Dr. O’ Brien is quick to admit he’ d never lived west of the Hudson River.“ But, I couldn’ t see myself doing anything else. I felt the most satisfied when I was working in the ER and ICU.”
In the old Louisville General Hospital, Dr. O’ Brien was interviewed for his residency by Dr. Donald Thomas, founder of the program. It was a far cry from the New England facilities where he’ d trained to that point.“ I was struck by so many things. There were so many bright people working in the ER. In New England, the ER had not been a place of emphasis. Here, there was a brain trust. Then you go to the cafeteria and there’ s no air conditioning, and they are serving fried bologna sandwiches. It was such a throwback, but in an odd way, it was all very attractive to me.”
Dr. O’ Brien was only here for a two-year residency then, but it was a busy two years. In that time, the General Hospital migrated to the University of Louisville Hospital, so he spent half of his residency at each location. He also became one of a small team of doctors placed on rotation for helicopter duty, where he would
Editor’ s Note: Welcome to Louisville Medicine’ s member spotlight section, Dr. Who? In the interest of simply getting to know each other as a society of colleagues, we’ ll be highlighting random GLMS physicians on a regular basis. If you would like to recommend any GLMS physician member to the Editorial Board for this section, please e-mail aaron. burch @ glms. org or call him at 736-6338.
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