Welcome to our first blog entry. I will update this website with new blogs entries on a regular basis with helpful and informative information regarding what we do at Fall Creek Skin and Health Clinic. For this first entry, I wanted to tell the story of how this clinic was started and how it has become a pioneering model of how healthcare can be done right.
Let me start in the beginning: high school, I had no idea what I was going to do in life. I dated a few nursing students and when they would tell me about the things they were learning and doing during their clinicals, I wondered why anyone would want to go into healthcare. Fast forward 6 years, I was just home from a LDS mission in Taiwan, recently married, and studying flight technology at Utah State because I thought I wanted to be a commercial pilot. My heart was not in it. I was still waiting for my future to fall into my lap. My father had a Masters degree in history, but owned a successful chain a gas stations and firework outlets in Wyoming. That made me think that it did not matter what one studied in school because you would probably end up doing something else. Around this time, I was playing church basketball and I sprained my ankle horribly. I did not know how to treat it and could not afford to see a doctor, so I tried to walk it off for a week. After a week of pain, swelling and black toes, I decided I had better get it looked at. While getting my ankle X-rayed, I was impressed with the technology and cleanliness of the hospital and thought it would be an interesting place to work. This was the first time I had any thought about working in healthcare. I had also read an article about how Radiological Technology was a career of the future in high demand. I got a job as an orderly at a nursing home in Logan and then after 3 years of pre-reqs and training, I graduated from Weber State University with a degree in Radiological Technology, to which I am still licensed today. Just like many fields in health care, the job market goes up and down and by the time I did graduate, jobs were scarce. I was willing to go anywhere, but I found a job in Idaho Falls at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. It was an interesting job, but I worked nights for the extra 2 dollars an hour. I spent most of my time in the ER imaging trauma patients(MVAs, gunshot wounds, altercations) and heart attack victims. It was not long before I felt I needed to do more, I needed to think more, make decisions and problem solve. As an X-ray tech, you mostly just follow orders, although I loved the interaction with the patients. I had first heard about Physician Assistants while working at the hospital in Logan, there was one there and everyone used to talk about him being ‘like a doctor but not really a doctor’. Now that I knew that I did indeed like healthcare and the way I got to meet, interact with, and help people, I wanted to do more! I will continue this story in the next blog. Brett Bagley