ER Director Says Doctors Should Heal Their Image

When a worker allegedly killed his former boss at a Camarillo business recently, then turned the gun on himself, the critically injured gunman ended up in Allen Hooper’s care.

When high waves swamped an outrigger canoe in a fatal accident near Channel Islands Harbor three weeks ago, two shivering rowers were rushed to Hooper’s hospital door.

As a specialist in the adrenaline-driven practice of emergency medicine, Hooper heads one of the county’s busiest trauma units at St. John’s Regional Medical Center.

It is a discipline that suits his nature. At 52, the California native surfs, skis and enjoys the rush of driving his cranberry-red, Autobahn-tested Porsche down a deserted highway.

“Emergency doctors are adrenaline junkies with a short attention span,” Hooper said. “It’s not very complimentary, but it’s what drives us.”

And Hooper is good at it, say those who make their living in the same hectic world.

“He’s a great doctor,” said Lynn Borman, paramedic supervisor for Gold Coast Ambulance in Oxnard. “He’s extremely efficient. He cares about the hospital and his community. I really like his stuff.”

This year, Hooper is expanding his duties beyond that usual life-saving swirl. He is the new president of the 450-member Ventura County Medical Society. And this time, the triage he hopes to perform is on the reputation of doctors.

“We have an identity crisis,” Hooper said. “Physicians can be seen as either the bad guy or the good guy. And what we need to do are things in the community to show that the physician really is the advocate of the patient, instead of caring only about ourselves.”

HMOs have come to dominate medicine in California--taking control of patients away from doctors--partly because patients stopped believing that doctors were on their side, he said.

“Patients thought physicians only worried about their financial interests,” Hooper said. “And that allowed HMOs to take over the business of medicine. But now we’re also seeing legislation to force the HMOs to be responsible to patients’ needs. So as things start to fall apart for the HMOs, we can reassert ourselves as advocates for the patients.”

To that end, the medical society recently endorsed a nonprofit patient advocacy group and gave its workers three free offices at the society’s headquarters in downtown Ventura.

Doctors are also volunteering to host a new weekly medical talk show at Cal Lutheran University’s local public radio station, where patients can call in with questions.

And physicians have decided to make themselves available for career days at local schools to encourage students to go into medicine.

As important, Hooper said, the medical society will try to help doctors improve their skills as operators of small businesses and as partners with their patients in medical care.

“People in medicine are no more greedy than people in any other profession,” he said. “But physicians are notoriously poor businessmen. And we have not had systems in place to help them as we should.”

As for patients, doctors don’t much like the ‘90s trend of calling those they treat customers or clients, but they do like the idea of working with patients to solve their problems collectively.

“We want to elevate their status to partner, instead of treating them as a supplicant,” Hooper said.

If the medical society’s new president comes to the job with a consumer bent, he came to his profession almost instinctively.

The son of a pharmacist, Hooper knew exactly what he wanted to do once he put his Hermosa Beach boy days behind him. “I could always understand anatomy better than I could a poem,” he said.

After graduating from UCLA Medical School, he trained under an esteemed surgeon at Boston University. But after one year of residency, he changed course because of his nature and his new wife, Christine. The unpredictable shifts of surgeons were not good for family life, he said.

In choosing emergency medicine, Hooper selected the stepchild of medical specialties. The American College of Emergency Physicians had just been formed when he began his training in the mid-1970s.

“Emergency medicine was where the least competent and least trained were thrown into rooms to figure out what to do,” Hooper said. “But it’s the situation with the highest acuity and highest risk of death.”

An emergency medicine residency at one of the nation’s biggest public hospitals--Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center--brought him back home.

At work, he learned his lessons in an emergency room that saw 1,000 patients a day. After work, he’d head home to Huntington Beach, where he regained his form as a surfer.

A five-year stint at Long Beach Memorial Hospital prepared him to take over emergency duties at St. John’s hospital in Oxnard. He now directs a five-doctor unit at St. John’s new Rose Avenue campus and also leads the emergency department at a sister hospital, St. John’s Pleasant Valley in Camarillo.

He still surfs--and not with the long boards of the graybeards--at Surfers Point near the county fairgrounds in Ventura.

He’s helped raise two sons, Nathan, 20, and Nicholas, 18. And wife Christine, a registered nurse, has been free to follow her culinary inclinations--as a restaurant chef and now as a founder of a company that develops recipes for baked goods.

“I really enjoy what I do,” Hooper said. “I wanted a lifestyle that was good for my family. And I like the emergency room. I wanted to be able to solve problems and move on.”

When pondering his emergency-room inclinations, Hooper said he is reminded of the story of three doctors who go hunting at a duck blind.

“The surgeon stands up and says, ‘Looks like a duck!’ Then boom, he shoots. The internist stands and says, ‘Could be a duck or a pigeon or a turkey.’ And pretty soon the bird is gone. Then it’s the emergency doctor’s turn, and he just shoots, boom, and says, ‘Those were birds, weren’t they?’

“They accuse us sometimes of shooting from the hip,” Hooper said. “But sometimes that’s the only way we can save a life.”

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Profile of Allen Hooper

Age: 52

Residence: Camarillo

Profession: Physician. Director of emergency department, St. John’s Regional Medical Center, Oxnard, and St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital, Camarillo.

Education: B.A., University of South Dakota, 1971; M. D., UCLA Medical School, 1973; internship, Boston City Hospital, 1973-74; residency, surgery, Boston City Hospital, 1974-75; residency, emergency medicine, Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, 1975-77.

Experience: Emergency room physician, Long Beach Memorial Hospital, 1977-82, and emergency department assistant director, 1979-82; emergency department medical director, St. John’s Regional Medical Center, 1982-present; clinical instructor, Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, emergency department, 1978-present; medical director, emergency department, St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital, 1994-present; medical staff president at the two St. John’s hospitals, 1996-98; Ventura County Medical Center Board of Governors, member, 1991-present.

Latest accomplishment: President of the Ventura County Medical Society

Goals for 1999: Develop medical society programs emphasizing physicians’ role as advocates for patients

Quote: “They accuse [emergency doctors] sometimes of shooting from the hip. But sometimes that’s the only way we can save a life.”