{"id":4316,"date":"2014-11-11T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=4316"},"modified":"2014-11-20T16:00:46","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T21:00:46","slug":"mike-lauria-answering-the-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2014\/mike-lauria-answering-the-call\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Lauria: Answering the Call"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Mike Lauria was a Dartmouth undergraduate studying biochemistry, he didn\u2019t aspire to join an elite military group, nor did he have dreams of becoming a physician\u2014he wasn\u2019t sure what he wanted to do.<\/p>\n

Although Lauria (D\u201905, Med\u201918) spent his college years as an emergency services volunteer with the Hanover Fire Department and provided medical support to officers in one of the region\u2019s law enforcement agencies, a medical career wasn\u2019t on his radar.<\/p>\n

Then his training officer, both a former Green Beret and state police officer, asked Lauria what he planned to do with himself after graduation. \u201cI said \u2018I wasn\u2019t sure,\u2019 and he replied, \u2018If you really like pre-hospital emergency care and rescue, and you like the tactical side of law enforcement, you should check out the Air Force\u2019s pararescue program,\u2019\u201d Lauria recalls.<\/p>\n

His suggestion surprised Lauria. He never had expressed an interest in joining the military\u2014he had nothing against it, but he had no particular interest in it either. The officer went on to say that he had attended dive school with the \u201cpararescue guys\u201d and encouraged Lauria to consider the program.<\/p>\n

He did, and with commencement looming, Lauria strode into the Air Force recruiters office in West Lebanon, N.H., and told them he was there to enlist. \u201cThey thought I was crazy,\u201d Lauria says. \u201cThey asked me if I was sure I wanted to enlist. If I was sure I wouldn\u2019t rather become a pilot or something else because I was soon to be a college graduate.\u201d Sure of his decision, he enlisted.<\/p>\n

On the heels of commencement, Lauria was off to basic training and into the \u201cpararescue pipeline,\u201d or \u201cSuperman School\u201d as it is informally known. Pararescuemen are special operations military paramedics who parachute, scuba dive, rock climb, or do whatever it takes to save lives in hostile territory and in humanitarian aid environments. They are able to assess critical situations quickly and manage trauma in the field, often with limited resources in the face of danger and time constraints.<\/p>\n

One of the longest special operations training courses in the world, Lauria says it was an intense and demanding experience. \u201cIt was the worst and the best time of my life,\u201d he adds. \u201cI was miserable\u2014but the amazing thing is that when you are pushed to your physical and psychological breaking point you learn a lot about yourself. You realize that you are capable of much more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""When
\"When help is not accessible through any other means, pararescue go where others can\u2019t go and do what others can\u2019t do. You go out there and you save those people,\u201d says Lauria.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After completing the grueling two-year training, Lauria was assigned to a unit based in England where he entered an endless cycle of deployments interspersed with ongoing training back in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the deployments was augmenting a joint special operations task force. We provided direct medical support to the operation, which means you either go out with an assault team or you stand by incase their helicopter gets shot down or their convoy gets ambushed,\u201d Lauria explains. \u201cA helicopter carrying 12 men crashed during a sandstorm. Many were critically injured and one man was pinned under the copter. We had to orchestrate a complicated extrication in a challenging environment\u2014in the middle of the Iraqi desert, decisions must be made very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Lauria, it\u2019s gratifyfing to work with people who are seriously or critically ill and need help. \u201cWhen help is not accessible through any other means, pararescue go where others can\u2019t go and do what others can\u2019t do,\u201d he says. \u201cYou go out there and you save those people.\u201d<\/p>\n

After leaving the military, Lauria returned to New Hampshire in 2012 to work with the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Advance Response Team (DHART)<\/a> as a flight paramedic, providing acute care to critically injured and seriously ill patients from northern New England en route to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center <\/a>(DHMC). Working side by side with DHMC physicians gave Lauria a glimpse of taking care of patients over time, rather than in the moment. That level of care appealed to him and he decided to apply to Geisel School of Medicine.<\/p>\n

While working with DHART, the easy-going and thoughtful Lauria was asked to share his military medical experiences with local EMS organizations. His initial talk grew into presentations at national conferences for critical care professionals, a Dartmouth College lecture entitled \u201cMilitary Special Operations Medicine,\u201d and two presentations at DHMC this year\u2014Nursing Grand Rounds, \u201cMedicina Bona, Locis Malis: The Evolution of Special Operations,\u201d and Department of Surgery Grand Rounds, \u201cMaking the Call: Enhancing Cognition, Critical Thinking, and Decision Making in Acute Care.\u201d As a guest lecturer at Geisel School of Medicine, he gave a talk titled \u201cAustere Critical Care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized what I learned in the military went beyond medicine,\u201d Lauria says. \u201cYou may be a very knowledgeable and capable physician, but when someone is dying in front of you being able to apply those skills in a very stressful situation is a different story. Most people don\u2019t realize the advanced level of care and ingenuity that happens in the field or in a tent\u2014to project that into a hospital environment is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

His Surgery Grand Rounds presentation on critical decision-making was filmed and posted on YouTube by Lauria. Within 48 hours the presentation had more than 500 hits and by the time Lauria matriculated this fall, he began receiving requests for podcasts from the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Australia to surgeons in New York City.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be here without the support of the people at DHART,\u201d Lauria says. \u201cThe level of knowledge and insight that group of nurses and paramedics has, has pushed me beyond what I learned in the military.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the encouragement he received as an undergraduate has come full circle. \u201cI\u2019m so proud of the support shown for veterans by the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees and President Emeritus James Wright,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s such a great feeling knowing that you are welcome here\u2014it\u2019s like coming home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Mike Lauria was a Dartmouth undergraduate, he didn\u2019t aspire to join an elite military group, nor did he have dreams of becoming a physician. But his love of emergency medicine led him to answer the call to serve his nation and community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[460,54,442,381],"class_list":["post-4316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-dartmouth-undergraduate","tag-dartmouth-hitchcock","tag-student-profile","tag-veterans","author-12"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/11\/mike_lauria-view.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-17C","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4316"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4325,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions\/4325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}