Ron Whitchurch
Website: https://50yearsintheor.com/
Question & Answer Interview
1. Tell us about yourself -
I was born in South Bend, Indiana in September 1942. Shortly after that our family moved to Rockford, Illinois, where my father was an insurance executive and my mother was a housewife. Dad was transferred in 1946 and we moved to Minneapolis, where I grew up and was educated.
After high school I attended the University of Minnesota and pursued a course of study in mathematics, hoping someday to work for the government in the fledgling space program. While at the university, I worked part time as an orderly at one of the large Minneapolis city hospitals and loved it. I was especially fond of the times I was called to work in the operating room because I was right where the action was, especially at the head of the table with the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) and watching them make decisions about the patient’s status during surgery and giving the drugs that kept them safe and asleep. The hospital had a nurse anesthesia program, and in talking to the CRNAs and students about their experiences, I was convinced that I needed to change my career plans and get into that field right away.
In June of 1966, after three years of mathematic studies, I left the university and entered the three year Registered Nursing diploma program at Abbott Hospital in Minneapolis. I ended up being the only male student in the class. I graduated in June 1969 and three months later passed my nursing boards to become a Registered Nurse. In November 1969 I was accepted into the nurse anesthesia program at the Minneapolis School of Anesthesia.
The anesthesia program at the Minneapolis School was eighteen months of morning clinicals, rotating to five large metropolitan hospitals, and three days a week of afternoon classes. After the first month we were allowed to do cases by ourselves with a CRNA there to help us start the case and available if we had any problems. We also took emergency calls with a CRNA for backup. It was probably one of the most well-rounded programs in existence then because the anesthesia departments at those hospitals all had different approaches and equipment to accomplish the same thing, which allowed me to see and employ many different techniques in administering anesthesia and served me well in the years that followed when I was alone doing emergency cases in the middle of the night.
After graduation I moved to Bemidji, Minnesota in 1971 with my wife and two young children. I went into practice with one other CRNA where we worked in a one hundred bed hospital doing all the anesthesia for scheduled and emergency call cases. Eventually we hired one full time and two part time CRNAs to split up the case load and calls. I stayed there for sixteen years, then moved to the Tampa Bay area of Florida in 1987 where I finished my career in a large, mixed group of anesthesiologists and CRNAs.
2. What inspired you to write 50 Years In The OR? –
I have always had it in the back of my mind since I retired & because of the unusual situations I dealt with as a CRNA I wanted the public to know about what an average day for anesthesia personnel was like.
3. How much of the book is realistic? –
Every story in the book is true but the names & some dates have been changed for obvious reasons.
4. Name one entity that supported you outside of your family members –
All my co-workers & friends.
5. Who designed the covers? –
I engaged the services of a professional book designer named Deana Riddle.
6. What was the hardest part of writing your book? –
It was the editing by far. The stories were burned into my mind but editing out the typos & redoing the sentence structure of many of them was tedious.
7. How did you come up with the title? –
I had many titles in mind to begin with but after researching many of them, they either went quite right or were already taken by other authors. My publishing coach came up with it & I immediately liked it.
8. Are the experiences based on someone you know or events in your own life –
The events are all true stories of cases I did & at the end of the book I describe 2 events that happened to me after I was diagnosed with a blood cancer while I was undergoing a stem cell transplant.
9. Is there a message in your book that you want readers to grasp? –
The message is that CRNAs are the most important people, outside of the surgeon, taking care of you during your surgery. They are the unsung hero's of the medical profession.
10. Do you have any advice for other writers? –
Be goal oriented & have a clear picture of what the focus of your manuscript is going to be. And, above all, give yourself plenty of time & persevere…..