[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]
William E. Laupus Health Sciences Library History Collections
East Carolina University Greenville, North Carolina
Oral History Interview Cover Sheet
Collection Number: ___3.8.3___(assigned by HSL Curator)
Date of Interview: 15 October 2001
Location of Interview: Greenville, North Carolina Narrator/s: Dr. Walter J. Pories
Date of Birth: Home Address:
18 January 1930
Profession or activity: Surgeon Interviewer: Ruth Moskop
Total number of tapes: 1 tape
1 CD
Total number of taped hours: 1 hour
Inclusive dates covered by interview: 1931 - 2001
Concise, narrative description of subjects and/or individuals discussed (one brief paragraph) (520):
The narrator of this interview, Dr. Walter J. Pories, is a surgeon and founding chair of the Department of Surgery at East Carolina University. This interview begins with Dr. Pories' tribute to his colleague and mentor, Dr. Charles Rob. A PowerPoint presentation accompanies this section of the interview. Dr. Pories also discusses how he and his wife came to East Carolina University, his work to develop the Department of Surgery, and the accomplishments of the Department over the first twenty-four years of its existence (1977-2001). The information included in this interview is relevant to the years 1931- 2001.
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A:\Pories 10-15-01\Cover Sheet.doc Revised by R. Moskop on 5/1712001
Oral History Interview Cover Sheet-- ii
Categorical list of topics covered in interview
People (with full name including maiden name and dates if known) (600):
Pories, Walter J.
Rob, Charles
De Bakey, Michael
Dr. Longino
Laupus, William E.
Salle, George
Rose, Mary Ann
Corporations/Organizations (610):
University of Rochester
East Carolina University
Pitt Surgical
SurgiCenter
Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Current Surgery
Conferences (611):
Topical Subjects (650):
History of Medicine, 20th Century
Surgery
Found Department of Surgery at ECU
Lyophilization
Geographic Areas (651):
Greenville, North Carolina
Eastern North Carolina
Boston, Massachusetts
Rochester, New York
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A:\Pories 10-15-Gl\Cover Sheet.doc Revised by R. Moskop on 5/17/2001
William E. Laupus Health Sciences Library
History Collections
East Carolina University
Greenville, North Carolina
Oral History Interview Cover Sheet
Index: Pories, Walter J.
Date of Interview: 15 October 2001
Narrator: Dr. Walter J. Pories
Profession or Activity: Surgeon Inclusive
Dates: 1931- 2001
Description of Subjects and/or Individuals Discussed:
Dr. Charles Rob
Lyophilization Anecdotes
Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital
Coming to East Carolina University
Pitt Surgical-Fichus Tree Incident
Blacks and Women in Surgery Dr. Salle Incident
Use of Seeing-Eye Dogs
Editing Current Surgery
Setting up the Medical School's Department of Surgery
Goals
Research Layouts Competition-Pitt Surgical
The Surgery Center
Funding
Mistakes in Set-up
Mary Ann Rose's Work for the Chancellor
Collection Number:
Date: October 15, 2001
Narrator: Walter J. Pories, MD
Interviewer: Ruth Moskop, PhD
Transcriber: Janipat Worthington
[Begin Part 1]
Walter J. Pories:
...was a guy named Edward Vernon who was in the British Navy and served at Chesapeake Bay, and they named Mount Vernon after him. And he was the guy who introduced giving a ration of rum to the Navy guys, and so for probably two centuries it was called Grog Vernon. Then in 1776, he was in parliament and he opposed sending an Army to the colonies because he said they'd never win. [Part 1] (00:30)
Ruth Moskop:
Fascinating. And you said that on his father's side, there were Scottish drovers... [Part 1] (00:36)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah, yeah. [Part 1] (00:38)
Ruth Moskop:
...who drove the cows from northern Scotland down to... [Part 1] (00:41)
Walter J. Pories:
From Scotland down to London. [Part 1] (00:43)
Ruth Moskop:
Which would have been the market? [Part 1] (00:45)
Walter J. Pories:
That's where the market was. He had an Uncle Mitchell, and one day he was the graduation speaker here at UNC and talked about Uncle Mitchell to the students. He said, "You know, I had this Uncle Mitchell who lived in northern England, and during the war he was asked to deliver a child, but he was so obese he couldn't get through the door of the trailer, so they had to create a tent in a hurry and bring the woman out where he delivered this baby." He said, "You know, fifty years after the war, I went back to that village to visit my family, and I would have thought they wanted to talk about the privations of the war. Not at all-they just wanted to talk about Uncle Mitchell.'' So he said, "Be careful what you do with your careers. People will remember a long time." He was a boy near ______-outside of London. He entered Cambridge in 1931 and graduated with a masters in 1934, and his tutor was a guy who won a prize in Physics. During that time, he found time enough to get a reserve commission in the RF and trained as a pilot. One day here-he was still in Rochester-he applied for a big Army grant for the preservation of arterial tissues by freeze-drying, and a guy came by-a very pontificating, obese, bombastic Army colonel. He said to the doctor, "Aren't you a surgeon?" Charles said, "Yes.'' He said, "Just exactly what do you know about lyophilization?" Charles said, "Oh, just a moment." He came back about 10 minutes later with three original papers of which he was the senior author describing the first description of freeze-drying of tissues. He was a far better scientist than people ever gave him credit for. [Part 1] (03:07)
Ruth Moskop:
Understood. Now, lyophilization is freeze-drying ... [Part 1] (03:10)
Walter J. Pories:
Freeze-drying tissue. He went from Cambridge to St. Thomas Hospital where he was an intern in 1937. He went to Montreal in 1939 but returned to London with the start of World War II. He didn't stay away but went back. He was the chief resident as the same time as in 1941 during the blitz. In the summer and fall of 1940, St. Thomas was hit by numerous bombs, and they just kept working. He made May Beasley, who worked at 10 Downing Street-that was his wife-______, and he said, "Well, you know, during the blitz I was having lunch with a minister, and we were sitting right next to a goldfish tank and the tank exploded. The next thing I saw was the minister gasping for air. It was a simple matter. I reached down his throat and pulled out the goldfish. [I] saved his life, but I did lose the goldfish." So it was only 50% successful. Okay? In 1941, he was assigned as a surgical specialist to the First Paratroops Brigade, and he parachuted into Tunisia 90 miles east of Tunis. Good-looking guy. [Part 1] (04:35)
Ruth Moskop:
Sure was. That's a wonderful picture. [Part 1] (04:38)
Walter J. Pories:
So he turned a French garrison school into a 20-bed hospital, and on November 20, the town was bombed and there were many casualties. On that day, he did 150 operations in spite of the fact that in the drop he had broken his tibia and kneecap. He'd give himself morphine and continue to work. He first took care of the Brits, and then he took care of the villagers, and then he took care of the wounded Germans. When he ran out of blood, he gave a unit of his own blood. And for that, he was awarded the military cross, which is the second highest medal for valor given by Britain. [Part 1] (05:30)
Ruth Moskop:
Where did you get these beautiful pictures? [Part 1] (05:33)
Walter J. Pories:
'Got some off the Internet, some are from his family, and so on. We used to talk, you know what I mean?-say, "______ [Part 1] (05:56) , do you know who my best surgical assistant was?" And I said, "Yes, Dr. Rob. You've already told me." "Well, let me tell it again." "Yes, Dr. Rob." "He was the driver of the ambulance I had in Tunisia." "Yes, Dr. Rob." "Do you know why he was the best surgical assistance?" "Yes, Dr. Rob." "Because he kept his hands still." [Part 1] (06:08)
Ruth Moskop:
His hands? [Part 1] (06:10)
Walter J. Pories:
He kept his hands still-kept them out of his way so he could do his work I guess. He fought all the way from Tunis, up Sicily, all the way up to Trieste. One day, he was sitting at the bay in Naples overlooking the Seine-overlooking the harbor-and there was a bridge officer next to him. And the bridge officer said, "You know, I'm the captain of that ship down there. Do you see it? Look at that for a while and see what's going on." And he said, "It was the damnest thing. One group was unloading the front of the boat, and the other guys were taking that stuff and loading it off the back of the boat." So the man said, "Now I could do two things. I could run down there and tell them to straighten all this out. And that would take probably a day to unload that damn boat." But he said, "If I just stay up here, they'll just find it out themselves and be so embarrassed, they'll work like hell. They'll know about it, and the boat will be done much faster." And he said, "That's just what happened." And he told me that story at a time when there was a question about whether to intercede or not to intercede. He said, "Sometimes it's good just to leave things go." [Part 1] (07:32)
Ruth Moskop:
Let 'em figure it out themselves. [Part 1] (07:33)
Walter J. Pories:
He returned to St. Thomas in '46 and became professor and chair four years later. He did the first carotid endarterectomy. He founded that whole field of Vascular Surgery. He described the thoracic outlet syndrome [and] described meralgia paresthetica, so his contributions, you know, were just enormous. [Part 1] (07:57)
Ruth Moskop:
The first carotid endarterectomy. Do you know any more details about that first procedure? [Part 1] (08:03)
Walter J. Pories:
It's interesting that Michael De Bakey published his report first of doing a carotid endarterectomy, but actually Rob had done his before that. Of course, it's being done by the thousands today for stroke. And here are just some of the various honors that he won. In 1960, he came to the University of Rochester to be the chair, and one of the things there was, it was a loosely regulated kind of place, and they'd schedule a case at 7:30 that would start at 8:15. So on his first day, he arrived-he was having a case at 7:30 because he was a professor. He arrived at 7:30 [and] the place was dark. He turned on the lights and began to scrub his hands. When people came in, they were amazed to see the new boss and professor in scrubs ready to go. [Part 1] (09:13)
Ruth Moskop:
Ready to go! [Part 1] (09:14)
Walter J. Pories:
Never again did it start not on time. He never raised his voice-never said anything-just did it. [Part 1] (09:26)
Ruth Moskop:
Set the example. [Part 1] (09:27)
Walter J. Pories:
You hear a bunch of stories. I'm not going to bother you with all that, but... [Part 1] (09:33)
Ruth Moskop:
I know they're good stories. [Part 1] (09:36)
Walter J. Pories:
But there's a limited time for more stories. [Part 1] (09:39)
Ruth Moskop:
Maybe we can come back to them. [Part 1] (09:44)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. Two years after I came back from the military to work on his faculty... [Part 1] (10:01)
Ruth Moskop:
This was in Rochester. [Part 1] (10:04)
Walter J. Pories:
.. .in Rochester, I said, "There's no future here for me. There are a bunch of guys that are ahead of me. They are certainly smarter than I am. They are all young guys." And I thought it over with my family, and I'm going to go into private practice, and I'm signing a contract with a Vascular Surgery [group] in town, and that's where I'll be. And he said, "You can't do that. You're the new vice chairman at Western Reserve and the chief of the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital." I said, "Where'd that come from?" He said, "Oh, it's all arranged. You'll start next July." I said, "You never told me." He said, "I was going to." [Part 1] (10:49)
Ruth Moskop:
(Laughs). [Part 1] (10:51)
Walter J. Pories:
I said, "You're kidding." He said, "Oh no, it's all done." Well then I went back to my office. My office had 60 rats in it and one desk that's in a big area. My secretary was on one end of it, and I was on the other end of it, and there were the rats. Of course, I was in practice at the same time, but this was the office in Rochester. [Part 1] (11:13)
Ruth Moskop:
Were they your rats? [Part 1] (11:15)
Walter J. Pories:
My rats. Yeah, I was doing research. My rats. So I waited six weeks-and nothing, nothing.
Seven weeks. Eight weeks. I said, "What the hell am I going to do?" The other guys were saying, "Well are you going to sign or not going to sign?" [Part 1] (11:38)
Ruth Moskop:
Sure. [Part 1] (11:39)
Walter J. Pories:
And suddenly two big guys came in. Both of them were 6'2" or so. One guy says, "HI, my name's ______, and I'm the chairman of Internal Medicine at Western Reserve," and the other guy says, "Yeah, I'm ______. I'm the chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and we felt very strongly that we shouldn't go ahead with the construction of the operating rooms without you seeing the plans, so here they are." [That was] my very first notice that I had that job. I never had an interview. I never talked to any trustees. I never had anything. No discussion of salary. And before I went there, he said, "Now I must take you to dinner and teach you the rules on how to run the department," and here they are. [Part 1] (12:32)
Ruth Moskop:
Rob's rules: "No meeting should exceed an hour. Start and stop exactly on time. Provide an agenda. Put the important matters at the end." [Part 1] (12:45)
Walter J. Pories:
Well so then nobody... Because if you know it's going to stop exactly at 5 and you've got some important stuff to talk about at the end, you're going to... [Part 1] (12:56)
Ruth Moskop:
You get to it. [Part 1] (12:57)
Walter J. Pories:
You get to it, see? He also said, "Never ever go to a meeting where you don't know the outcome." In other words, talk to people before the meeting-get it all said and inake sure you got all the facts so there are no surprises at a meeting. [Part 1] (13:13)
Ruth Moskop:
He was a shrewd... "A faculty vote on every item except the important issues. Share the budget with the faculty." [Part 1] (13:26)
Walter J. Pories:
That means that if the-and that's what I did here-that is, every dollar that's spent in this department, everybody knows about it-what they earn, how much they bring in, what the costs are, and so on. You do that and nobody ever comes up and says, "I need this machine. I need it right now because of' so on and so forth. You see? "Well, you've got the budget... however you can do it." And I think the reason that this has been so successful... And Rannie does the same thing. It's the only school I've ever seen that done. German departments don't do this. Every penny, every dollar decision, and space decision is made with the faculty. [Part 1] (14:16)
Ruth Moskop:
That makes good sense. [Part 1] (14:20)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. [Part 1] (14:21)
Ruth Moskop:
Oh, there's more: "He who disagrees has the committee." I can see some rationale to that. "Your job is to be interrupted." [Part 1] (14:32)
Walter J. Pories:
I said, "I can never get my work done." He says, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well these people in the halls... " He says, "You ought to be grateful for them. Say they meet you in the hall with a problem. First of all, they haven't thought it through real well, and you can resolve it in two minutes. If they come to your office, it'll take 30 minutes, and they got this whole speech planned. So immediately when they say, 'Could I see you some time about a problem?' You say, 'Well, why not right here?' Then you're so flustered, you can't get it all together, see?. But you immediately know what it's about, and you can deal with the issue right then and there." Okay? [Part 1] (15:25)
Ruth Moskop:
The best you can. Lets see: "Hospital duties. Always maintain a practice. Keep in touch with what is going on. Hospital duties are not an excuse to stay away from home." [Part 1] (Laughs). "The chairman's complications are the first to be discussed. Handle each piece of paper only once. Keep it brief." Very efficient. [Part 1] (15:52)
Walter J. Pories:
He came to East Carolina in 1978. It was the first graduating class, and he was enormously helpful. He wrote our bylaws. He developed our faculty retirement benefit plans-that's why they're so good, and immediately Chapel Hill copied them. [Part 1] (16:13)
Ruth Moskop:
For the whole medical school? [Part 1] (16:15)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah, because... He laid the ground rules. There's the ficus tree incident, which was a big deal in this department. The first six months, I practiced in Longino' s office up at Pitt Surgical because there was no place to practice. They were enormously kind to me. They'd get me records and all this stuff and help me recruit. They just couldn't have been nicer, and that then set the stage for all these next 20 years of cooperation. Well when my office finally was ready, I sent them a ficus tree as a statement of gratitude, and it cost 18 bucks. Okay? And so I sent this in to be reimbursed as a business expense, and the auditor here said, "We're not paying that. That's a personal gift. Absolutely not." I was about to pay it, and Charles Rob said, "You do that and make a major error. This is the time to determine that any business
expense-any reasonable business expense-must be paid by the state and not by you. If we're going to be successful as a business venture, you got to have the same ground rules-if it's okayed by the IRS-it should be okayed by the state." Ed Monroe did not agree. I said, "Bullshit," and we took it up to the board of trustees and then the board of governors and then the governor's office... [Part 1] (18:08)
Ruth Moskop:
Over a ficus tree. [Part 1] (Laughs). [Part 1] (18:10)
Walter J. Pories:
... and the governor's office ruled that the ficus tree clearly was an appropriate business expense where someone had done this for the state. [Part 1] (18:22)
Ruth Moskop:
Because they hadn't requested any reimbursement? [Part 1] (18:26)
Walter J. Pories:
No. And that this was exactly right, and [they] made the rule that any business expense that would be approved by the IRS would be approved by the state. So I wrote in there the ficus tree incident, but that's what that's all about. Very major, major thing! [Part 1] (18:50)
Ruth Moskop:
How long had you been in Longino's office did you say? [Part 1] (18:53)
Walter J. Pories:
Six months. [Part 1] (18:54)
Ruth Moskop:
Six months. Wow! [Part 1] (18:55)
Walter J. Pories:
Anyhow, I would have said, "The hell with it" and paid the 18 bucks. But Rob said, "How could you ever get a better example? How could you ever possibly dream of a better way to show that this was appropriate?" [Part 1] (19:14)
Ruth Moskop:
Yeah-yeah. I'm sorry that Dr. Longino is no longer with us. [Part 1] (19:22)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. [Part 1] (19:23)
Ruth Moskop:
I never got a chance to interview him. [Part 1] (19:26)
Walter J. Pories:
Interesting guy. Absolutely rigid. Totally, completely rigid, and [he] saw the world as black and white. [Part 1] (19:36)
Ruth Moskop:
I think that's part of what made him a good campaigner for the medical school. [Part 1] (19:40)
Walter J. Pories:
He upset a member in a morbidity and mortality conference. He'd tell his best friend-he'd say, "That's unacceptable surgery. You really screwed up." That set the tone, see? So he'd come into the office, and he'd say, "I gotta reconsider that decision." At the same time they were so rigid, they caused me a bunch of problems. They did not like women to go into surgery and did not like blacks in surgery, and they didn't express it as that. But they said, you know, "She's just not up to par. He's just not good enough." That was a problem, and we lost some people as a result of that. I finally had to take a stand, and I said, "Here's the record.
These are the people that you've turned down. They happen to all be women and blacks. I can't tolerate that." And then, you see, a guy like Longino could say, "Walter, you're right." Really! Very impressive guy. But black and white-in more than one way. [Part 1] (21:08)
Ruth Moskop:
Yeah. [Part 1] (21:08)
Walter J. Pories:
After two years of working here, and we were moving and I was happy, and I went into Charles and I said, "Well, what do you think? We're really doing well, huh?" And he said, "Walter, I have never been so disappointed with you in my life." I said, "I can't work any harder." He said, "That's your problem. You're working seven days a week. You're forcing your faculty to work seven days a week. Your residents are working seven days a week. There's not an original idea coming out of here. Everybody's exhausted, and you'11 have people all at each others' throats." I said, "Well what do you expect?" He said, "No one should work more than four weekdays-period." I said, "We can't do it..." And so he then started in the faculty meetings to whine. He knew how to whine and nag, and the whole group said, "Charles, it ain't gonna work." Then finally, about four or five months later, I said, "Damn it, I've had it. [Part 1] (22:31)
Okay. We're going to do it. You'll see. All right, no one will work more than four days a week. We'll each choose a different day to be off. You cannot come in on the three days that you're not on unless you have weekend call, and if you do have to come in to pick up something, you cannot wear a tie-you gotta wear old clothes." The practice tripled. Grants suddenly flowed out of here, and grant moneys flowed in. People were the happiest I had ever seen them, and for the 19 years I was chair, we never had a divorce in either the faculty or the residents. Saturday conferences disappeared. Friday afternoon conferences disappeared. They just cut back. It was just bad, but he was absolutely right. He said, "You can't ever become creative if you don't have time to get a haircut." Interesting, huh? [Part 1] (23:45)
Ruth Moskop:
I understand. [Part 1] (23:47)
Walter J. Pories:
The nicest thing he ever said to me was just before he left. It was not "I knew you could do it." It was "I knew you would do it." So he left a legacy... A marriage of 60 years... Aren't these great pictures? [Part 1] (24:07)
Ruth Moskop:
They're beautiful pictures. [Part 1] (24:08)
Walter J. Pories:
Four children and eight grandchildren-a whole covey of trained surgeons-a whole new discipline of Vascular Surgery-four enriched universities-a world of grateful patients. And you know, he left ECU when he was 70 and until this year was a full professor of Surgery at USUHS. [Part 1] (24:35)
Ruth Moskop:
And what is USUHS? [Part 1] (24:37)
Walter J. Pories:
Uniformed Services and University of the Health Sciences-the miliary medical school in Washington. [Part 1] (24:44)
Ruth Moskop:
Ah! That's a beautiful POWERPoint presentation. [Part 1] (24:49)
Walter J. Pories:
It is yours. [Part 1] (24:52)
Ruth Moskop:
Well thank you. How about if I get a copy made and bring it back? [Part 1] (25:00)
Walter J. Pories:
I got another copy. [Part 1] (25:01)
Ruth Moskop:
You got a copy? [Part 1] (25:02)
Walter J. Pories:
It's yours. [Part 1] (25:03)
Ruth Moskop:
You're ahead of me. Thank you very much. [Part 1] (25:05)
Walter J. Pories:
So that's one story. I think he probably deserves more... [Part 1] (25:21)
Ruth Moskop:
Mention. [Part 1] (25:22)
Walter J. Pories:
... than just a little paragraph. I think it'd be fair of you to say, "Well Walter, why don't you write this stuff up?" And I have such a full plate that I just can't do it. [Part 1] (25:38)
Ruth Moskop:
I'll figure it out. This paper-it may be worth a whole other paper on Charles Rob. It sounds like it probably is and his contribution to the Department of Surgery and the medical school. [Part 1] (25:54)
Walter J. Pories:
What I'd like to do is write that up and publish it in CURRENT SURGERY. You know, I'm the editor and chief of a journal. [Part 1] (26:02)
Ruth Moskop:
Congratulations! [Part 1] (26:04)
Walter J. Pories:
Well it's a hell of a lot of work. [Part 1] (26:07)
Ruth Moskop:
Yeah! [Part 1] (26:08)
Walter J. Pories:
But it's a nice journal. [Part 1] (26:11)
Ruth Moskop:
That's good. And that's where you'd like to have a tribute to Dr. Rob? [Part 1] (26:23)
Walter J. Pories:
I think it would make a good story. It'd be fun to read. You could probably stick it in the NEW YORKER. Well, you know, they do profiles like that. [Part 1] (26:36)
Ruth Moskop:
Uh-huh. This is a fairly technical-type journal for the most part, isn't it? [Part 1] (26:46)
Walter J. Pories:
Well I publish poetry in it, I run a contest for medical students to write the best ethical stuff, I publish my cartoons in it... [Part 1] (26:56)
Ruth Moskop:
I don't see one. [Part 1] (27:00)
Walter J. Pories:
Not in that issue. [Part 1] (27:01)
Ruth Moskop:
Didn't make this issue. [Part 1] (Laughs). [Part 1] (27:04)
Walter J. Pories:
But, see what the problem is is you look at the average journal. Here's an average surgical journal. Okay? [Part 1] (27:13)
Tape is paused.
Walter J. Pories:
The question was: What would be the image of the department? Would it be just another one of these new medical schools? That wasn't good enough. So Laupus and Richardson worked out the missions of the school, and the three missions are-as you recall-to promote primary care, to bring minorities into the healthcare system and to care for the profession, and to care for the people of eastern North Carolina. Okay? And we got together and said, "Okay, now what are our goals?" We said, "Well we can't do research on everything." We chose obesity as one of the goals, and you know what happened with that. Then we came down to the departmental level. We said, "Okay, well what are we going to do here? What are our missions? Could we compete with Harvard?" I mean, you're gonna say, "We want this to be the finest medical school in the world." Okay? Why not really aim for the stars? Well, "How are we going to get there? How are we going to get noticed and get the impetus going? Should we do it in research? Should we make this a research institute and compete with the Harvards [Part 1] (28:45)
and Hopkins of the world?" There's no way you can do it. A starting school-a new school didn't have the research-didn't have the dollars-didn't have the manpower. So that was out. The second one was: "Could we compete with those centers in terms of clinical care?" And we thought, "Yes, but we won't have these big series. We won't have 200 of these, 400 of these... " Now we do, and now we have Chitwood and the obesity programs, and we're the best in the world in some of those areas. But at that time, even that was several years away. So we said, "We're going to be a center for surgical education." There had never been one in post graduate medicine besides the first one. We put out every two years. And then the next thing was we took a defunct journal and turned it into real journal and just about a month ago were accepted for _______. [Part 1] (30:02)
Ruth Moskop:
That puts you on the map! [Part 1] (30:06)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. So the purpose has been education. Now we're trying to develop a Virtual Department of Surgery that you can do all this stuff on the Web-going to the office, talking to somebody, listening to lectures if necessary, taking tests, find your assignment, find out when the conferences are... [Part 1] (30:29)
Ruth Moskop:
Is that for continuing surgical education or is that at the residency level? [Part 1] (30:33)
Walter J. Pories:
Initially at the residency level and then later for continuing medical education. [Part 1] (30:37)
Ruth Moskop:
And the defunct journal is now called... ? [Part 1] (30:40)
Walter J. Pories:
CURRENT SURGERY. It used to be called CURRENT SURGERY-it was defunct and dropped-but it was easier to pick up an old journal than to try and start a new one. [Part 1] (30:52)
Ruth Moskop:
That's wonderful! Now I'm holding this SURGICAL RESIDENT CURRICULUM. It says third edition, year 2000. Do you remember when the first edition came out? [Part 1] (31:04)
Walter J. Pories:
It's in the front some place. 1996 or something. Sherry Cox can give you the whole story about that. [Part 1] (31:16)
Ruth Moskop:
So in the mid 90s this came about. The medical school had been here since '77 as a four-year school, and the first residents came I believe in '77 as well-surgical residents. So it took a while before you developed a curriculum-to a publishable state. [Part 1] (31:56)
Walter J. Pories:
Well I think this was started in the 80s actually. [Part 1] (31:59)
Ruth Moskop:
In the 80s? And to whom is this distributed? It says association-the Program Directors of Surgery. They publish it. So it's available to anyone who has a Surgery training program. [Part 1] (32:14)
Walter J. Pories:
To any resident and to anybody studying for re-certification. In other words, these are goals, and these are called threads and weaves, you know. It's a complex kind of story. [Part 1] (32:29)
Ruth Moskop:
That's wonderful. We'll have to weave that in. [Part 1] (32:38)
Walter J. Pories:
But I think this growth of an educational direction... And now the question is, "How do we keep it open? How do we do this?" Well surgical training is done so badly and so inefficiently that we've tried now for the last two years to get these various organizations interested in Surgery to make some changes, but we can't seem to do it. So it looks like in the next month or two, we're going to write an absolutely revolutionary approach to surgical training. We can't go on like this. This is so... The average resident works 100 hours a week-a hundred hours a week. And then we expect them to study. The tests we give them are all ______ tests. They're not asking how do you take care of diverticulitis?-but rather, what's the methyl group on the last chemical that's being used for diverticulitis? Well, you know, who the hell cares? And so he doesn't get a good grade. These guys are trying to read everything. [Part 1] (33:58)
Ruth Moskop:
And that is too much. [Part 1] (34:01)
Walter J. Pories:
Well they're distributed more according to service needs than their own educational needs. A guy who's going to become a general surgeon-how many months does he need to spend on cardiac surgery? [Part 1] (34:18)
Ruth Moskop:
So it's worth putting in some more... We've got Charles Rob to add. We've got medical, well, surgical education. [Part 1] (34:28)
Walter J. Pories:
The whole contents in surgical education have come out of here, and people say they look to us about educational research and stuff. We're good at it. [Part 1] (34:41)
Ruth Moskop:
That wonderful. [Part 1] (34:43)
Walter J. Pories:
We've also been cited heavily for getting blacks into surgery, and we've been recognized by the National Medical Association-you know, that's the black... -and by the Association of Black Academic Surgeons for furthering careers in blacks. What other stories do I have down for you? [Part 1] (35:15)
[The following text was transcribed from the original recording. The audio is missing on the current media]
Ruth Moskop:
Let's see. Your own curious recruitment to ECU in 1977.
Walter J. Pories:
Well I was looking at three jobs-the chairmanship at Stanford and at Yale. Both of them were bad jobs in terms of resources and stuff. My dad was so proud, and then I got this call to come to Greenville, North Carolina. As the guy was talking, who was a former dean at Syracuse by the name of Wiggers. he said, "It's in Greenville, North Carolina." We had this little atlas on the bedside table, and there was no Greenville, North Carolina. I thought, "This is really so... "
Ruth Moskop:
You didn't believe it existed.
Walter J. Pories:
No, I thought, "Boy, this is some practical joke." But I had a sense of humor, so I said, "Who is this really? Is this Fred?" And the guy hung up-pissed off. The next day, my chairman called me, and he said "Did you get a call from Greenville, North Carolina?" I said, "It was you, wasn't it?" He said, "No." I said, "You're an idiot." He said, "It's a terrific job. You can
build anything you want to build in a state known for its dedication to higher education. How much better could it be, Walter?" So I called the guy back.
Ruth Moskop:
Who was your chief?
Walter J. Pories:
A guy named Bill Holden. And then he says, "Furthermore, Walter, by the way, believe it or not, you are not God's gift to Surgery. You're sort of hard to sell." Surgeons are an outspoken group.
Ruth Moskop:
Straightforward.
Walter J. Pories:
I called this guy back, and now he's trying to be funny, okay? He says, "I'll meet you at the Kinston International Airport." So I fly to Charlotte and end up in a four-seater airplane. Tm not exaggerating. [We] land in Kinston where there's a white ______. The other two guys get off-I get off-they get in their pickup trucks. The Sheriff rides off. The plane takes off, and I'm left all alone on the damn tarmac looking at a cornfield.
Ruth Moskop:
(Laughs).
Walter J. Pories:
The guy had forgotten to pick me up.
Ruth Moskop:
Oh my goodness!
Walter J. Pories:
I said, "This is without question the funniest joke that's ever been pulled on me."
Ruth Moskop:
Who was supposed to meet you?
Walter J. Pories:
Dean Wiggers. He was the predecessor of Laupus. So he finally arrives an hour later-all apologetic. This is just one big soybean field. I'd never seen a soybean. So I opened a soybean and started to eat 'em, and the dean and Jim Jones were exasperated with this guy eating these beans. Finally Laupus says, "All right, you got the balls to do this?" And I said, "Don't ever ask a surgeon that question. Of course I do." He said, "You got the job. Let's shake on it." So we shook hands. I got back on the plane and came home, and I said, "Maryanne, I've accepted the job." She said, "Without talking to me?" I said, "Well, yeah." She said, "Well, what's your title?" I said, "I didn't ask." She said, "Are you going to have tenure?" I said, "I didn't ask." She said, "What's your salary?" I said, "I didn'tiask." She said, "Is there a job for me?" I said, "I didn't ask." She said, "You're a damn idiot." So she calls up Laupus and says, "We're coming down there tomorrow. We have a few detail&to work out." (Laughs).
Ruth Moskop:
(Laughs). Good for her.
Walter J. Pories:
So we stayed at Laupus's house and worked out the details, and Terry Lawler-you probably know Terry Lawler-it turns out Terry Lawler and Maryanne were classmates at Georgetown.
Ruth Moskop:
Oh!
Walter J. Pories:
So that helped a lot.
Ruth Moskop:
Well good. That is a wild story! There was something in the air, huh?
Walter J. Pories:
I just thought, "This is the kind of... " My dad had always said, "Contracts are not reliable. If you like a guy and trust him, you don't need a contract. If you don't like him, don't trust him. They don't write contracts good enough to cover that."
Ruth Moskop:
Your dad was a wise man! Where was he at this time, Walter?
Walter J. Pories:
Milwaukee.
Ruth Moskop:
In Milwaukee. I think I better turn over the tape. Excuse me.
The tape is turned over.
[Begin Part 2]
Ruth Moskop:
The first test of the department. [Part 2] (00:02)
Walter J. Pories:
There was a guy here named... I was here about two years, and there was a guy named George Salle who was a urologist and a member of every prominent family around here, okay? His daughter is Judy Yongue, the psychiatrist. One day I got an emergency call to come to the operating room. Dr. Salle had ripped a kidney off this woman's vena cava and [wanted to know] would I see her. So I went down and clamped, and I managed to save her. So I came back to my guys, and I said, "Listen, that shouldn't happen." And they said, "Oh, he's no good. He's a terrible guy-can't operate and doesn't take good care of his patients." I said, "Well then, I can't have him here." They said, "Good luck because you're gonna lose." I said,
"If I lose, that's the way it is, but we can't have him." I talked to Longino, and he said "You've no choice. If you don't do this, then you're not worthy of your chairman." [Part 2] (01:20)
Ruth Moskop:
He had come onto the faculty as part of the community... [Part 2] (01:27)
Walter J. Pories:
No, he was here-he had been practicing here. So we had this hearing at his request because I took away his privileges and put him on probation. I said, "Shape up or... " after reviewing his charts. And then he went to the board of trustees who were all his buddies, and we went through his hearing for about four hours. Longino called me up, and he said, "You're losing your ass. You're gonna lose your job because you're not being tough enough. You're being nice. Why don't you tell these guys the truth?" So I came back in and said, "I don't want to be personal, but 'you' have been shown to have tuberculosis in your urine and it has never been followed up. 'You' have blood in your urine, and 'you' should be investigated for a tumor. 'You' have a lesion on your kidney." It just so happened that... And I said, "None of 'you' have had reasonable care." I said, "I can't tolerate this-to be your chair of Surgery and tolerate this kind of care here. It's up to you to vote this." And so they voted in my favor, thank God. I had a job, and I gave Salle another six months and he didn't meet the standards. [Part 2] (03:08)
Ruth Moskop:
How would have he been able to meet the standards? What could he have... ? [Part 2] (03:12)
Walter J. Pories:
Improve his records-take appropriate care of patients. He wasn't doing his job. He was out of touch. [Part 2] (03:19)
Ruth Moskop:
And he was caring for his buddies on the board of trustees I guess is the... [Part 2] (03:24)
Walter J. Pories:
He was not doing a good job. [Part 2] (03:26)
Ruth Moskop:
Wow! [Part 2] (03:27)
Walter J. Pories:
That's just one. The other major craziness was when Drs. Bost and White and some others decided to build a surgery center. They'd asked the hospital to build a surgery center, and the hospital said, "We don't have the funds." They asked the state to build one, and the state said, "It'll take 2-3 years for an appropriation." They said, "We can do much better at a surgery center," and so 17 surgeons here decided to build a surgery center and didn't tell me about it. I was the new chief of Surgery. I came to those guys, and I said, "I'm not going to let you do that unless you make me one of the partners because if I'm not a partner in the surgery center, then I'm not a chief of Surgery, and I'll just leave." So they made me a partner. [Part 2] (04:37)
Ruth Moskop:
And the point of the surgery center was to have an outpatient surgery facility. [Part 2] (04:43)
Walter J. Pories:
Oh yes, which does it much cheaper and under better conditions. There is no question that we needed a surgery center, but the question was could this be totally private without any relationship to the medical school? And I said, "I can't do that." So I wrote a note for
78,000 bucks, signed it, and told Maryanne about it. [Part 2] (05:07)
Ruth Moskop:
78,000 dollars? Oh!! [Part 2] (05:11)
Walter J. Pories:
She said, "You must be out of your mind." I gave them a check for 1400, and interestingly enough, that's paid off extremely well. We sold it to the hospital at a profit, got the money back, and had a surgery center; but much more valuable was the importance that physicians in hospitals must work together. See otherwise, there would have been a highly competitive institution with the hospital and the school. This way, it said, "We're all part of this together." [Part 2] (05:47)
Ruth Moskop:
The same enterprise., yeah-providing healthcare. [Part 2] (05:51)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. [Part 2] (05:51)
Ruth Moskop:
What year did that happen? Do you remember-about? [Part 2] (05:55)
Walter J. Pories:
I can't remember-in the 80s sometime-late 80s. [Part 2] (05:58)
Ruth Moskop:
Late 80s. [Part 2] (05:59)
Walter J. Pories:
Not that long ago. [Part 2] (06:01)
Ruth Moskop:
When did you come? [Part 2] (06:03)
Walter J. Pories:
'77. [Part 2] (06:04)
Ruth Moskop:
'77. Yeah, right at the beginning. [Part 2] (06:06)
Walter J. Pories:
What other stories have you got down there? [Part 2] (06:08)
Ruth Moskop:
The next prompt you've given is, "It will never work out. She has three first names, she doesn't cook, and she wears coats for dresses." [Part 2] (06:17)
Walter J. Pories:
Oh yeah. Simmons Patterson, who is now dead. [He] was a highly anal, insecure guy who stopped doing surgery when he was in his 40s because he thought he was going to have a heart attack, okay? He always had jobs like being head of AHEC or so on, okay? [Part 2] (06:39)
Ruth Moskop:
Ah, yes. [Part 2] (06:40)
Walter J. Pories:
Anyway, he was on the search committee, and so he met Maryanne. And Maryanne had a dress on that was sort of severe but had big buttons here and looked like a... [Part 2] (06:53)
Ruth Moskop:
It was a coat dress. We all had coat dresses. [Part 2] (06:56)
Walter J. Pories:
You know those. Yeah. So he spent a little time with her, and then he came back to the search committee and said, "Guys, it's never going to work out. He's got a wife who wears coats for dresses, she's got three first names, and she can't cook." [Part 2] (07:13)
Ruth Moskop:
(Laughs). Three first names and can't cook. [Part 2] (07:20)
Walter J. Pories:
Terry Lawler was on the search committee that day. "Is that a great line?" [Part 2] (07:25)
Ruth Moskop:
What was Maryanne's first position when she did come? [Part 2] (07:29)
Walter J. Pories:
When Maryanne came, she worked for the School of Nursing and soon rose to be the dean or assistant dean or whatever it was for all graduate studies-research studies. And then simultaneously, she got a doctorate from State in the administration of educational institutions. [Part 2] (07:53)
Ruth Moskop:
I remember that. [Part 2] (07:54)
Walter J. Pories:
And then she was given several really tricky jobs-all trying to resolve problems-and did it so well that Brewer invited her to work in the Chancellor's office where he certainly had his hands full. And she managed to do that, and she then became the head of Equal Opportunity? Affirmative Action and so on. And then when Brewer left, she worked for Howell. When Howell left, she worked for Eakin, and now she's working for Muse-same job. She's done a whole bunch of stuff. For all the years that she was in Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action, none of the problems ever surfaced in the newspaper-not a one. She had ______into this problem-African-Americans, a fraternity getting out of line, and a whole bunch of stuff. [Part 2] (09:00)
She would just resolve it. There was a guy at one of the fast food places who told a young waitress once he found out she needed a job that he could do that if she had sexual relations with him. So she called this guy in and said, "I have no idea if this is true, but you've just got to know that there's a rumor-just a rumor-that you've said this to three of our co-heads. If we hear that one more time, we're going to close your place 'cause we're not gonna let the students come into your place." The guy said, "Well..." She said, "I don't really care, but if that same rumor should pop up even one more time, you will not have any customers." [Part 2] (09:56)
Ruth Moskop:
Good for her. [Part 2] (09:57)
Walter J. Pories:
So she was really good at this stuff. She was a white woman from the north running it, but she's got this great sense of humor. And she never brings work home. [Part 2] (10:13)
Ruth Moskop:
That's fabulous. [Part 2] (10:15)
Walter J. Pories:
She just has a power. So that's sort of what she does. She runs interference and runs searches and... [Part 2] (10:23)
Ruth Moskop:
That's marvelous. So Mr. Patterson's prediction turned out to be invalid. Your next prompt says, "The early days in Ragsdale on the other campus." [Part 2] (10:33)
Walter J. Pories:
Well we didn't start here, as you know. We were in the other place, and no one quite knew how to take us. We didn't quite know how to take anybody else. I mean, there was no place to practice. There was no place to do anything, and none of us had ever really started a medical school. See, you gotta remember that the school actually started over there in those old buildings. [Part 2] (11:03)
Ruth Moskop:
Yeah. It started actually in the Life Sciences Building. [Part 2] (11:07)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. [Part 2] (11:08)
Ruth Moskop:
And then Ragsdale was renovated. [Part 2] (11:10)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. [Part 2] (11:11)
Ruth Moskop:
And then it moved into... [Part 2] (11:12)
Walter J. Pories:
Beardley. [Part 2] (11:13)
Ruth Moskop:
Let's see: "The development of the initial faculty including the recruitment of Charles Rob and
______" [Part 2] (11:25)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. When I came here... You know, you never recruit a chairman of Surgery because he's knows how to operate; you recruit him because he's done research someplace, and I was a guru
in trace element chemistry and ______ metabolism and so on. And so this guy called me up [Part 2] (11:48)
from New Zealand and said, "I'd like to be your post doc and just do trace metal research as a chemist." And I said, "Yeah, great, come along." And so he came up, but just when he came up, I had accepted the job to come to North Carolina, so I said, "Do you want to come with me and help me start a department," and he said, "Yeah." He's now the chair of Surgery at Dunedin, New Zealand. So the three of us found ourselves-there was Charles Rob from Britain, ______from New Zealand, and Walter Pories from Germany, okay? So we applied for residency, and this guy Woodward came from the residency review committee to see if our program could be accredited. He______(the volume was reduced
dramatically at this point on the tape)_____. I want to make absolutely sure that you understand, we're not going to have any foreigners in this program. Is that clear?" And Rob says, "Absolutely. We'll only have 'em on the faculty." [Part 2] (12:57)
Ruth Moskop:
(Laughs). Only on the faculty, huh? Oh, my goodness. [Part 2] (13:04)
Walter J. Pories:
So that's that story. [Part 2] (13:05)
Ruth Moskop:
Humor, humor. I've got "They don't make endotracheal tubes for infants." [Part 2] (13:14)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. I came here and had done the Pediatric surgery before. There was no one willing to do kids, and, you know, the kids we got were just awful. I mean, the level of disease in this area was just unbelievable. In the first year of practice, I never saw a single cancer that was curable-they were all so advanced. We had a lot of congenital abnormalities in children or a lot of prenatal problems that could have been resolved. So anyway, I had to operate, and to operate on a baby you gotta have an endotracheal tube. I said, "We'll take this kid to the... " I said, "All right. Please put him to sleep." They said, "They don't make endotracheal tubes for kids." I couldn't believe it. So we found some irrigating tubes that were about the right size, cut them off, and made 'em into endotracheal tubes. To get flow sheets for infants, I had to send to the Boston Children's Hospital to have some people run them down in a plane so I could keep track of the patients. The neatest thing about North Carolina is people didn't say, "Hell no, we're not gonna do that" like they would have up in Cleveland. They said, "Oh absolutely, if that's the way it's done, we want to do it right," which was remarkable. [Part 2] (14:55)
Ruth Moskop:
Very supportive. They were interested in doing the best they could do. [Part 2] (15:01)
Walter J. Pories:
Ah. It's a wonderful place to live. What's the next one? [Part 2] (15:06)
Ruth Moskop:
How about: "Marsha and Patsy. A bill for flea spray." [Part 2] (15:13)
Walter J. Pories:
(Laughs). Well as you already got wind of, I'm sort of a bleeding liberal. I'm not a right wing Republican. [Part 2] (15:28)
Ruth Moskop:
Okay. [Part 2] (15:29)
Walter J. Pories:
You don't have to put that in. But when a woman applied who was totally blind to be our secretary, I said, "Let's hire her," and we trained her to use a computer. [Part 2] (15:45)
Ruth Moskop:
Wow! [Part 2] (15:46)
Walter J. Pories:
And we had a computer that had a speaker on it and a program, and so she was chosen as the disabled person of the year. But the thing that I really liked was the fact that she had a seeing? eye dog whose name was Patsy. Patsy was a black lab who sat right at the desk out there, and a lot of people came here for interviews and never realized the dog was there. It's really funny because the dog was right out in the open, but they never saw her. Well Patsy became a problem because she developed fleas. And so it cost I think 15 or 18 bucks a month to get her the flea treatments, and we sent that to the auditor-(laughs)-and won the fight. [Part 2] (16:39)
Ruth Moskop:
That must be a model for employment. That is an amazing story in itself! [Part 2] (16:47)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. [Part 2] (16:48)
Ruth Moskop:
Was that ever written up? [Part 2] (16:49)
Walter J. Pories:
I don't think so. [Part 2] (16:50)
Ruth Moskop:
Oh, goodness. [Part 2] (16:51)
Walter J. Pories:
But she did win a disabled worker of the year award. [Part 2] (16:56)
Ruth Moskop:
At what level-university? [Part 2] (16:58)
Walter J. Pories:
State. [Part 2] (16:59)
Ruth Moskop:
At the state-the State Employees' University award. All right. Lets' see: You've got "the founding of the residency program and the curious sight visit." [Part 2] (17:09)
Walter J. Pories:
That's what I talked to you about-the only foreigners we'll have are on the faculty. [Part 2] (17:19)
Ruth Moskop:
All right. "Obesity research: A methodology for coexistence." [Part 2] (17:25)
Walter J. Pories:
Well people asked, "How'd you choose obesity?" And the problem was, how do we not get the private surgeons upset. You know, you can recognize that almost every major medical center
is run by surgeons. The dean may not be a surgeon and the director may not be a surgeon, but the guys who make the most noise, bring in the most money, bring in the most patients are surgeons, and so they are assertive people. They carry a lot of clout. It was ______ to me that if we hit guys in their wallets... People say, "You know, you can steal somebody's wife, but don't steal their wallet." That kind of thing. The question was, "What kind of case could we do that would not impinge at all on them and yet show the people that we were really good surgeons?" I ran across a paper talking about a surgery for obesity, and I said, "Let's try this. Nobody likes fat people, and this looks okay." But the operation didn't work, and so it took us some numbers of patients to work out the right operation, which we then called the Greenville Gastric Bypass. The main choice for doing that was not because of some great drive but rather that we had to live in the same community with those guys. [Part 2] (19:15)
Ruth Moskop:
That's fascinating-necessity. [Part 2] (19:21)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. And it was a wise decision because we preserved those friendships. [Part 2] (19:28)
Ruth Moskop:
That and focusing on education-surgical training-kept the relationship strong. [Part 2] (19:36)
Walter J. Pories:
But then Pitt Surgical made a strategic error. I don't know about writing this in. It was evident that once we gained strength that the two of us became competitors, okay? And I thought about that. Their mode of operation was that you had a doctor du jour. If you had a problem on Thursday, you got Thursday's doc, and he would take care of you-and they did everything.
And I didn't think that that was the way surgery was going to go. I thought that if you had a thyroid problem, you wanted a thyroid surgeon; if your mother had a breast problem, she would want a breast surgeon. So we countered them with the doctor du jour thing by totally dividing into subspecialties here in the school. Still, everybody was capable of taking call at night and so on, but if this guy had cancer of the pancreas, he was sent to the guy who was interested in cancer of the pancreas. Within a year or two, that suddenly made us all specialists. You know,if you see a whole bunch of these, that's your job. That's what sunk Pitt Surgical, and they're sunk now. [They] fall apart, people have left, but their system of doctor du jour did not hold up against us. That was a critical decision. [Part 2] (21:16)
Ruth Moskop:
And doctor du jour would just be one surgeon taking care of everything that needs to be... [Part 2] (21:24)
Walter J. Pories:
Yeah. [If] you needed a surgeon-you needed your aorta out-you'd go to them and he'd said, "Oh, yeah, I'll do that tomorrow" because he did 'em all. [If] you came to East Carolina, we'd say, "You gotta go to Steve Powell." He only does arterial surgery. He does 38 of these operations a month. Who would you go to? [Part 2] (21:51)
Ruth Moskop:
Sure. [Part 2] (21:51)
Walter J. Pories:
So that was what that was about. [Part 2] (21:55)
Ruth Moskop:
Well now, the SurgiCenter, though, is still thriving I assume. [Part 2] (22:01)
Walter J. Pories:
The SurgiCenter is very thriving. It's owned by the hospital now. [Part 2] (22:04)
Ruth Moskop:
Oh that's right. [Part 2] (22:05)
Walter J. Pories:
But it deals with thyroids, breasts, appendices-small operations-and then people can go home. [Part 2] (22:15)
Ruth Moskop:
Yeah, good. Let's see. The last little hint you have here says, "Building a hospital by trial and error-lots of errors." [Part 2] (22:26)
Walter J. Pories:
Oh yeah. We made more mistakes! The original hospital was-I gotta check on the figures-I think it was 280 beds, but it may have been 340 or something. Gene Furth and I sat there and said, "Bill, this is just insane. The other hospitals around here have 100 beds, and they're not full. We're going to have 300 beds, and we're gonna fill 'em? It's going to be the biggest white elephant you ever drilled." And he said, "Naw." And then I, of course as the great chief of Surgery said, "Surgery ought to be centrally placed so you can get to it from all over the place." Well we opened the doors, and it was filled on the first day. Right away, it turned out that we didn't have adequate ORs, but since it was in the center rather than on a wing, you had to move everybody, and we've not gotten over that. It's still centrally isolated and located. It was a mistake. We ran out of parking places. We ran out of power plants. We ran out of the ability to feed the staff. .. [Part 2] (23:48)
Ruth Moskop:
My goodness. [Part 2] (23:50)
Walter J. Pories:
... and then had to go buy some silver carts from New York that-you know, the hot dog carts?-and we wheeled them around these floors to feed the nurses. [Part 2] (24:03)
Ruth Moskop:
You took lunch to them. [Part 2] (24:05)
Walter J. Pories:
I mean, there was not a single mistake we didn't make. [Part 2] (24:11)
Ruth Moskop:
Wow, and yet the institution thrived. [Part 2] (24:15)
Walter J. Pories:
But the management by McCrae and Debbie Davis and Jim Ross is so outstanding, it's clearly the finest hospital I ever worked in. Brilliant! [Part 2] (24:30)
Ruth Moskop:
The people who came---the people who packed the ORs-who were they? Where did they go before? What did they do before? [Part 2] (24:38)
Walter J. Pories:
Well one of the nice things about the school is we've trained our own-got Allied Health schools. We've attracted some from other places, but we've bent over backwards not to interfere with the practices elsewhere. About eight or nine years ago, I think it was the guys from Kinston-I can't remember-it might have been Washington-said, you know, "We can't stand the med. school. All you're doing is stealing our patients. We're just furious." I said, "Great. Why don't ya'll come to dinner, and we'll make rounds." So I gave them a list and said, "Okay, let's make rounds." And at the end of each patient ______, and we got residents who don't. I said, "You want this patient transferred back?" "Oh no, not that one." Well there wasn't a single patient that they wanted back, and I said, "Guys, pull your stuff together. If you don't want to send a patient... All we're here to do is to try and figure out a way to support these patients when they take too much of your time. So I think that's worked out. We've got a system. [Part 2] (26:05)
Ruth Moskop:
That sounds good. [Part 2] (26:09)
Walter J. Pories:
I just wanted you to get a different flavor. [Part 2] (26:16)
Ruth Moskop:
I appreciate it very much, and I've known from the beginning that your thoughts, your reflections were important. I'm glad we could get together this morning. What is your wish with regard to this tape? May I keep it and transcribe it and archive it, or would you rather I use it just for purposes of this paper and then burn it? [Part 2] (26:38)
Walter J. Pories:
You can do whatever you would like to do. This is your project, and I'm just trying to be helpful. [Part 2] (26:45)
Ruth Moskop:
Can we say on tape that I do have your permission to record the interview? [Part 2] (26:50)
Walter J. Pories:
You absolutely have my permission to record the interview, you have full copyright, and you can do anything you wish with it. [Part 2] (27:00)
Ruth Moskop:
Thank you very much. [Part 2] (27:02)