Jumpline magazine JUNE 2023 pages - Flipbook - Page 14
14
Dr. Donald Rosenberg Remembered
Medical Director, Pioneer
and Jokester
Dave Downey, Ret.
I first met Dr. Rosenberg in the mid-1980s when I first became an American Heart Association ACLS instructor. I was
invited to teach a weekend class at the Medical Training and
Simulation Laboratory (MTSL), aka Harvey House, in the Jackson Memorial Hospital complex. Dr. Rosenberg was a lecturer
and, back in those days, after the 2-day class, the instructors
would all go to dinner. At dinner, with all these prominent doctors and ACLS instructors, I was first introduced to Dr. Rosenberg, the man with a joke for every occasion. He would kick off
the round robin joke telling, and each participant had to come
up with one of their own. If someone was stumped, no fear, as
Dr. Rosenberg was always eager to pinch hit with another joke.
Dr. Rosenberg was one of the primary instructors at many
teaching venues and, of course, the most popular because every lecture started with a joke. While the jokes were always a
great way to break the ice, every participant was enamored
by Dr. Rosenberg’s ability to make emergency cardiac care so
simple and easy to understand. This brilliant physician was
able to relate to the street medic in a way that I had never seen
before. He was so passionate, and he loved “his” paramedics.
Who were “his” paramedics? Every paramedic that he ever
taught.
Dr. Rosenberg’s jokes were sometimes a bit…well, you
know. At one point at the school, he was told he couldn’t tell
jokes anymore. This lasted for a day or two and when the class
collectively wanted to walk out if he didn’t start with a joke, he
asked anyone who might be offended to step out, he would
close the door and he would tell his joke.
During the late 80s and early 90s
thrombolytic therapy (tPA) became
all the buzz for emergency cardiac
care. The critical element used to
determine if someone was a candidate for this lifesaving care was
the determination that it was an
active myocardial infarction with ST
segment elevation and other subtle
ECG changes. Our Lifepaks at
the time did not have the sensitivity to pick up these changes but soon, the technology
was there. Dr. Rosenberg
believed in “his” paramedics and knew they could be
taught how to read ECGs,
learn the indications/contraindications for tPA and
administer it in the field.
He knew “time was muscle!” He saw how every
instructor was able to
learn ECG interpretation during his impromptu training sessions
over the years and knew paramedics could learn. Even though
the leadership at the school, and even many in the American
Heart Association did not support Dr. Rosenberg, in fact they
forbade him to discuss it, he began teaching the paramedics
anyway and as they say, the rest is history.
In South Florida, Doctors Eugene Nagle and Robert
Hirschman were the pioneers who brought EMS into the fire
service and similarly, Dr. Donald Rosenberg was the visionary and champion who brought improved cardiac care to EMS
through ECG interpretation and the STEMI network we know
today.
Dr. Rosenberg was also responsible for bringing Dr. Richard
Furlong to MDFR. I was a young lieutenant and part of the Protocol Committee which was tasked with developing our medical protocols. I can’t stress how far away MDFR was from the
standard of care in those days. When Dr. Furlong came along,
he was a young, brilliant ED physician. He knew what needed
to be done to raise our level of care and wasn’t quick to jump
on the latest craze bandwagon. EMS was rapidly evolving, and
Dr. Furlong was able to keep up. Tragically, we lost Dr. Furlong
to cancer. He was in his early 30s.
I have known Dr. Rosenberg or “Donnie” as I always called
him for nearly 40 years. I didn’t call him Donnie out of disrespect but rather because that is what he wanted to be called.
He was such a humble man and could care less about titles or
accolades. What he cared about most was his family, especially his loving wife Grace, his patients, his passion to save lives
and HIS PARAMEDICS. Donnie challenged me to be a better
person, a better family man, a better instructor, a better paramedic, and when we worked together in EMS, a better leader.
I will always cherish our friendship, his jokes, his smile and his
passion. Rest in peace my friend.
My Memories of
Dr. Donald Rosenberg.
A Gadget Guy.
Charlie Perez, Ret.
Donnie was a gadget-type guy. He liked to play with things.
I think he owned every portable phone that was made. When
the Blackberry came out, he had one the next day. I first met Dr.
Rosenberg when he became my wife’s cardiologist. When the
Miami Shores Fire Department (now MDFR Station 30) was
trying to become fully ALS functional, we were lacking telemetry. We tried to get the City of Miami to let us use their system,
but Dr. Hirschman, who was the inventor of early telemetry,
was worried it would load up the radio traffic and the City could
get bogged down with radio traffic.
Dr. Hirschman did agree to lend me a demodulator, a little
box that converted the ECG’s electrical signal to a tone. We
found that Siemens made a battery-operated portable ECG
unit, and it had an ECG input that we could connect to the de-
June 2023 | JUMPLINE Magazine
