The Good Life – January-February 2021
On the cover – Steve Hallstrom - Radio Host and President of Flag Family Media. Local Hero – Tony Hamilton - Emergency Room Physician. Dad Life – Working and Teaching from Home. Fargo's new Police Chief and more in Fargo-Moorhead’s only men’s magazine.
On the cover – Steve Hallstrom - Radio Host and President of Flag Family Media. Local Hero – Tony Hamilton - Emergency Room Physician. Dad Life – Working and Teaching from Home. Fargo's new Police Chief and more in Fargo-Moorhead’s only men’s magazine.
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
to Jamestown, North to just this side of Altru… We<br />
actually go out to the North Dakota-Montana border,<br />
as far as what gets sent to us frequently — they have<br />
small hospitals and don't have a lot of specialty resources."<br />
Especially now, in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic,<br />
physicians like Hamilton are seeing patients from as far<br />
out as Iowa and Wisconsin.<br />
"We have to be able to take care of new things that may<br />
be beyond the level of what can be provided in an outlying<br />
area," he said. "We've got to be able to do that here."<br />
Critical strokes, heart attacks, traumas and more — no<br />
matter what the call, surgeons and physicians have to be<br />
ready at a moment's notice to stabilize, treat and turn out<br />
patients as soon as possible. That rings true now, more than<br />
ever, as pressure to keep stable patients out of the hospital,<br />
and to move patients through the emergency department<br />
more quickly, rises and becomes more important with<br />
each passing day; both for keeping beds open for patients<br />
in critical condition, as well as for limiting exposure from<br />
COVID-positive patients to patients who have not been<br />
exposed.<br />
Even before the pandemic, there was very little that<br />
Hamilton hadn't seen or experienced.<br />
"One of the things<br />
I have to say about<br />
the residency at Tulsa<br />
Regional, it was an<br />
aggressive residency," he<br />
said. "Very aggressive. So I<br />
knew<br />
what I was getting into when I got<br />
into this, so nothing really surprises me anymore.<br />
But it's kind of one of those things where, in emergency<br />
medicine, you're going to see those crazy things at some<br />
point."<br />
Especially on the mental health side of things, Hamilton<br />
says that's one of the things he's seen increase specifically,<br />
since the onset of COVID.<br />
"I think that one of the things that we're seeing with the<br />
pandemic is the mental health thing has kind of gone off<br />
the rails," he said. "Prairie St. John's does an excellent job<br />
of helping us out. I've never worked in a place where we<br />
had such access to psychiatric services. I think people are<br />
tired of being holed up," he said. "I think it puts a strain on<br />
a lot of folks and all those things that kind of sit under the<br />
surface are getting expressed more now."<br />
Play hard.<br />
While his work in the emergency department takes up<br />
urbantoadmedia.com / THE GOOD LIFE / 33
Change language