By Doug Brunk, San Diego Bureau
Dr. Bobby Ridgeway's experience as a volunteer firefighter in the early 1970s sparked his interest in medicine. He joined the volunteer firefighter department in his home town of Pinewood, S.C., when he was 14 years old, responding to calls on his bicycle.
"The out-of-town fires required finding someone to take me, or just listening on the scanner," recalls Dr. Ridgeway, a full-time ob.gyn. in Manning, S.C., and a volunteer firefighter for the Manning City Fire Department and the Clarendon County (S.C.) Fire Department. "By age 16, I had my driver's license and didn't miss many fires. I loved to be the engineer, the guy who runs the pump."
After completing an EMT (emergency medical technician) course, he attended paramedic school at the urging of local emergency department physicians and nurses he came to know, as well as his "second family" at the fire department. He completed paramedic school 2 months before his 22nd birthday and got married shortly thereafter.
"My encouragers set me straight and told me to continue my education in medical school at the University of South Carolina [Columbia], because I would need to advance my way up the ladder since children usually follow marriage and my EMT salary would probably fall short," he said. "They were right about the salary but not about the children; my first came between my first and second year of medical school and my second between my first and second year of residency."
These days the amount of time he devotes to firefighting varies according to his call schedule, but he responds to fires, auto wrecks, and other emergencies as time permits. "If I have to go to the hospital, I just leave the fire or accident scene," said Dr. Ridgeway, who also is medical director for the Clarendon County Fire Department.
He and other volunteers get a stipend of $5 per call to cover the cost of gas, "but that's it."
He listed several parallels of being an ob.gyn. and a firefighter, including the need for ongoing training and education, critical decision-making skills, a willingness to embrace new technologies, and an approach to work with a certain amount of fearlessness. Firefighters "go places and do things that others wouldn't," he explained. "In medicine, a lot of physicians shy away from delivering a baby, or from [being an] ob.gyn., in general."
Perhaps the greatest parallel, he said, is that both professions provide an opportunity to achieve near immediate results.
"When you go to a fire, within several minutes you're usually going to see some results of your activity," he said, noting that Manning's population is about 6,000 residents. "The same thing applies to being an ob.gyn. If somebody arrives in labor, you're going to see some results of your activity within several hours. Or if you have to do surgery on somebody, you're going to see results of your activities pretty soon. It's not like you have to perform an action and wait several days or months until you figure out if it worked or not."
Befriended as a Newcomer
When Dr. Tom Simpson arrived in Sterling, Kan., in 1978 to become the town's sole physician at the time, four members of the Sterling Volunteer Fire Department were among the first to befriend him.
"I've always been a guy who enjoyed having male friends to run with, and these were really good guys," recalled Dr. Simpson, who is trained in family medicine. "They were guys that I came to trust. I enjoyed being with them."
The men invited Dr. Simpson to join the fire department as a volunteer and he readily accepted. He completed formal firefighter training and worked his way up the ladder (no pun intended) to become chief of the department, a post that he held for 10 years.
"I felt good about the leadership skills I provided to the community during that time," he said. "A physician can take the role of leader in a small community pretty easily."
Mindful that he was the only physician in town for more than a decade, "the practice always came first," he said. "I didn't leave to fight fires during the day."
However, fire calls don't always come at convenient times in this city with a population of about 2,500 residents. "Sometimes, I've been up all night fighting fires and I've been up all night taking care of sick people in my role as a physician," he said. "There is excitement in both jobs. I do obstetrics and I love delivering a babies. It's just about the neatest thing going and, yet, driving a fire truck or fighting a fire is also exciting."