thedrifter
11-26-07, 08:12 AM
Following 2 oaths
As an Army Reserve psychiatrist, a Milwaukee doctor balances serving his country, patients
By MEG JONES
mjones@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 25, 2007
The first thing Milwaukee psychiatrist Mike McBride learned to do before seeing his patients was to take off his uniform shirt.
If they didn't see the Army major's bronze oak leaf clusters or think of him as an officer, the survivors of Iraqi roadside bomb blasts were much more likely to talk about their problems. So McBride quickly realized wearing a white lab coat over his Army uniform often did the trick.
He found strawberry milkshakes helped, too.
Although McBride has been a psychiatrist for many years, it took some adjustment to switch from his private practice of child and adolescent patients to his military practice dealing with hurting and stressed Marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors. He's still a doctor, and they're still patients, but there's also the added layer of the military hierarchy that sometimes puts him at odds with the two solemn oaths he has taken - to Hippocrates and to the U.S. government.
McBride, 46, joined the Army Reserve Medical Corps after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and has served two 90-day tours, in 2003 and 2006, at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where many of the American service members severely wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan are sent before returning to America. Next month he's mobilizing to go to Iraq.
Aside from covering up his uniform, McBride learned to pick up McDonald's milkshakes to make patients more comfortable and to show them, in a small way, that someone cared. The most common flavor for Marines was strawberry. So McBride often found himself talking to battle-hardened, tough Marines who clutched pink drinks as they talked about the horrible things they had witnessed.
Most just wanted to know what happened to them - a common theme for military members who lose consciousness from explosions and wake up hours, days or weeks later.
"Here their lives have been literally and psychologically blown apart. I would ask 'What do you need to know about what happened to you? Is it OK if I contact your commander?' So often the question was survivor guilt - 'I changed seats with my buddy and he died.'
"Oftentimes their main question was, 'Did I do my job right?' "
Mobilizing next month
McBride had a thriving private practice in Milwaukee when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Stunned by the attacks, the Fond du Lac native volunteered for the Army Reserve unsure if the military would accept him because he's deaf in his left ear from childhood mumps. But McBride persisted, and the military needed doctors, so he was accepted.
He recently gave up his practice at Milwaukee Psychiatric Physicians Chartered and now works at the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center's mental health division in Milwaukee.
In December, the husband and father of two is mobilizing with the Army Reserve 785th Combat Stress Company, based at Fort Snelling, Minn. The unit of roughly 60 soldiers will include three psychiatrists along with social workers, nurses, psychologists and behavioral technicians.
McBride's specialty of adolescent behavior might seem incongruous with his work at the VA, where the majority of patients fought in World War II, Korea or Vietnam. But adolescent psychiatry is in demand as the population of veterans seeking medical help gets younger with the growing numbers of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"A lot of soldiers regress (from trauma), and a lot of them are young. When they're lying in bed with their head shaved, they look 14," McBride said. "They're holding stuffed animals or they're on the phone with their mom and they're crying."
A calming technique
One patient who made an impression on McBride was a soldier at Landstuhl who had massive arm and leg wounds from an improvised explosive device and was freaking out from flashbacks of the blast. A nurse asked McBride to help calm the man. While the nurse went to get medication, McBride asked the soldier to describe a place that had happy memories - a common relaxation technique.
The soldier began to talk about fishing on a northern Minnesota lake with his brother, and within a few minutes the soldier had drifted off to sleep.
The next time McBride saw the soldier "he said 'I've found myself going back to that place.' But he said 'I'll never be able to go back again because I'm no longer innocent,' " said McBride, pausing to regain his composure. "He had done some things, killed people in Iraq. I think he was 19."
As a doctor and a soldier, McBride finds that the oaths he took to do no harm to his patients and to uphold the U.S. Constitution and preserve the military's fighting strength sometimes conflict. While stationed at Landstuhl he ordered traumatized service members to return to the United States for psychiatric treatment, sometimes over the wishes of military commanders who told him the soldier was needed in Iraq, McBride said.
"There's always the tension between the oath I took to Hippocrates and the oath I took to the U.S. Army," he said.
Like his father
McBride's route to psychiatry took a few twists and turns. He earned a bachelor's in biology at St. Thomas College in St. Paul, Minn., then spent a year studying at a seminary before earning a master's at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and teaching at Milwaukee's King High School and Messmer High School in the late '80s. Working with teenagers and their problems got him interested in adolescent behavior, and he decided to go to medical school, graduating in 1992 from the Medical College of Wisconsin and interning at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.
His decision to join the Army Reserve and give up his private psychiatric practice has meant a financial hit for his family. But McBride sees it as a calling not unlike that of his father, Fuller McBride, who was drafted during the Vietnam War and served without complaint before returning to his obstetrics and gynecology practice in Fond du Lac.
McBride said his decision baffled some friends, colleagues and family members. "Some people get it and others I talk to are like - it just doesn't register. Some say, 'Why would you give up 10 years of a private practice to go work at the VA?' "
Rich Gibson, the head of mental health services at the VA, doesn't ask why. He said he's just thankful McBride is bringing his expertise in adolescent and young adult psychiatry to help patients in their early 20s who are dealing with war trauma as well as pre-existing conditions.
"He had a calling to help and to join up, and I think that calling has been incredibly strong and admirable in him," Gibson said.
Ellie
As an Army Reserve psychiatrist, a Milwaukee doctor balances serving his country, patients
By MEG JONES
mjones@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 25, 2007
The first thing Milwaukee psychiatrist Mike McBride learned to do before seeing his patients was to take off his uniform shirt.
If they didn't see the Army major's bronze oak leaf clusters or think of him as an officer, the survivors of Iraqi roadside bomb blasts were much more likely to talk about their problems. So McBride quickly realized wearing a white lab coat over his Army uniform often did the trick.
He found strawberry milkshakes helped, too.
Although McBride has been a psychiatrist for many years, it took some adjustment to switch from his private practice of child and adolescent patients to his military practice dealing with hurting and stressed Marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors. He's still a doctor, and they're still patients, but there's also the added layer of the military hierarchy that sometimes puts him at odds with the two solemn oaths he has taken - to Hippocrates and to the U.S. government.
McBride, 46, joined the Army Reserve Medical Corps after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and has served two 90-day tours, in 2003 and 2006, at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where many of the American service members severely wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan are sent before returning to America. Next month he's mobilizing to go to Iraq.
Aside from covering up his uniform, McBride learned to pick up McDonald's milkshakes to make patients more comfortable and to show them, in a small way, that someone cared. The most common flavor for Marines was strawberry. So McBride often found himself talking to battle-hardened, tough Marines who clutched pink drinks as they talked about the horrible things they had witnessed.
Most just wanted to know what happened to them - a common theme for military members who lose consciousness from explosions and wake up hours, days or weeks later.
"Here their lives have been literally and psychologically blown apart. I would ask 'What do you need to know about what happened to you? Is it OK if I contact your commander?' So often the question was survivor guilt - 'I changed seats with my buddy and he died.'
"Oftentimes their main question was, 'Did I do my job right?' "
Mobilizing next month
McBride had a thriving private practice in Milwaukee when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Stunned by the attacks, the Fond du Lac native volunteered for the Army Reserve unsure if the military would accept him because he's deaf in his left ear from childhood mumps. But McBride persisted, and the military needed doctors, so he was accepted.
He recently gave up his practice at Milwaukee Psychiatric Physicians Chartered and now works at the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center's mental health division in Milwaukee.
In December, the husband and father of two is mobilizing with the Army Reserve 785th Combat Stress Company, based at Fort Snelling, Minn. The unit of roughly 60 soldiers will include three psychiatrists along with social workers, nurses, psychologists and behavioral technicians.
McBride's specialty of adolescent behavior might seem incongruous with his work at the VA, where the majority of patients fought in World War II, Korea or Vietnam. But adolescent psychiatry is in demand as the population of veterans seeking medical help gets younger with the growing numbers of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"A lot of soldiers regress (from trauma), and a lot of them are young. When they're lying in bed with their head shaved, they look 14," McBride said. "They're holding stuffed animals or they're on the phone with their mom and they're crying."
A calming technique
One patient who made an impression on McBride was a soldier at Landstuhl who had massive arm and leg wounds from an improvised explosive device and was freaking out from flashbacks of the blast. A nurse asked McBride to help calm the man. While the nurse went to get medication, McBride asked the soldier to describe a place that had happy memories - a common relaxation technique.
The soldier began to talk about fishing on a northern Minnesota lake with his brother, and within a few minutes the soldier had drifted off to sleep.
The next time McBride saw the soldier "he said 'I've found myself going back to that place.' But he said 'I'll never be able to go back again because I'm no longer innocent,' " said McBride, pausing to regain his composure. "He had done some things, killed people in Iraq. I think he was 19."
As a doctor and a soldier, McBride finds that the oaths he took to do no harm to his patients and to uphold the U.S. Constitution and preserve the military's fighting strength sometimes conflict. While stationed at Landstuhl he ordered traumatized service members to return to the United States for psychiatric treatment, sometimes over the wishes of military commanders who told him the soldier was needed in Iraq, McBride said.
"There's always the tension between the oath I took to Hippocrates and the oath I took to the U.S. Army," he said.
Like his father
McBride's route to psychiatry took a few twists and turns. He earned a bachelor's in biology at St. Thomas College in St. Paul, Minn., then spent a year studying at a seminary before earning a master's at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and teaching at Milwaukee's King High School and Messmer High School in the late '80s. Working with teenagers and their problems got him interested in adolescent behavior, and he decided to go to medical school, graduating in 1992 from the Medical College of Wisconsin and interning at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.
His decision to join the Army Reserve and give up his private psychiatric practice has meant a financial hit for his family. But McBride sees it as a calling not unlike that of his father, Fuller McBride, who was drafted during the Vietnam War and served without complaint before returning to his obstetrics and gynecology practice in Fond du Lac.
McBride said his decision baffled some friends, colleagues and family members. "Some people get it and others I talk to are like - it just doesn't register. Some say, 'Why would you give up 10 years of a private practice to go work at the VA?' "
Rich Gibson, the head of mental health services at the VA, doesn't ask why. He said he's just thankful McBride is bringing his expertise in adolescent and young adult psychiatry to help patients in their early 20s who are dealing with war trauma as well as pre-existing conditions.
"He had a calling to help and to join up, and I think that calling has been incredibly strong and admirable in him," Gibson said.
Ellie