A Bremen man who has worked in emergency and transportation medicine for over 40 years was honored at the State House May 18 with the State of Maine Emergency Medical Services’ Governor’s Award.
Dr. Peter Goth was presented with the award at a ceremony in the Hall of Flags at the State House. The event was attended by nearly 100 people, including Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew and Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Morris.
“The Governor’s Award is a really special award because it is not offered every year. It is only awarded when there’s an individual who really has gone significantly above and beyond for an extended time and made a contribution that is really at the very top of the list,” said Jay Bradshaw, the director of Maine EMS.
While Goth lives in Bremen, he currently works as the medical director for the emergency medicine and transportation medicine departments at The Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle.
Goth is also the founder and president of the Critical Care Training Institute, which trains people on emergency procedures at a “critical care hospital level,” including training on advanced airway procedures as well as some surgical procedures, he said.
According to Goth, he has been involved with emergency medical services development for at least the last 30 years. He graduated from medical school at Tulane University in 1972, which was before emergency medical services existed and patients were still transported in hearses, he said.
Goth has served as a medical director for a couple of EMS regions around the state, and was also part of the group that wrote the first statewide protocols for EMS, he said.
In the 1980s, Goth founded Wilderness Medical Associates, and through that organization worked with Outward Bound, the National Park Service, the FBI, and mountain rescue services to create new clinical guidelines that were more practical, he said.
As an example, Goth said in 1993 he wrote a series of guidelines based on contemporary medical literature that changed the way wilderness medical providers could handle patients with regard to spinal injuries.
At the time, the standard rules were to treat anyone involved in a fall or a car as if they had a spinal injury, strapping them to a backboard and putting a collar on their neck whether or not they actually needed it, Goth said.
The rules were based on emergency medicine in an urban environment, not a rural setting where a hospital could be some distance away or in the wilderness where someone might be strapped to a backboard for days, he said.
It was safer, if a spinal injury could be ruled out, to walk a patient out of the wilderness than to carry them out on a backboard, Goth said.
Goth established a test to rule out spinal injury based on three criteria: no spine tenderness or pain, a normal neurological exam, and an awake and reliable patient.
Soon after he wrote those new guidelines, it became apparent the same rules were needed for EMS in Maine because of the potentially long trips to hospitals, Goth said, and the guidelines were adopted into the state’s protocols.
Goth later retired out of Wilderness Medical Associates and sold it – it still operates today – and started his new organization, the Critical Care Training Institute, in 1994.
LifeFlight of Maine has been sending its personnel to be trained at the institute annually since 1998, and the company’s success rates “have been as good as they can get,” Goth said.
Now, the Critical Care Training Institute is offering training for emergency rooms and critical care units as well, he said.
Goth recently retired from his work on the regional EMS boards, and said he felt confident in making the decision while the younger generation continues to refine things he helped rough out.
“One of the thrills for me is to see how well EMS is doing with this new, younger leadership,” Goth said. “They’re doing a great job and I’m confident it will continue.”
Goth also recognizes that he stands on the shoulders of those who came before him, and at the award ceremony he was able to thank both his father, who Goth said taught him how to teach, and his longtime mentor Larry Hopperstead, a trauma surgeon at Central Maine Medical Center.
Goth said he was proud to have contributed to the field of emergency medical services.
“It’s just amazing to see what we’ve accomplished in the 30, 40 years I’ve been in EMS,” he said.
According to Bradshaw, Goth has a real passion for EMS and takes very seriously the responsibility of passing that on to ensure the next generation of physicians and providers are as well trained as possible.
“He still has that energy, he has that passion. He’s done it from literally one end of the state to the other,” Bradshaw said. “He’s also just a really nice guy.”
Goth lives at Springtide Farm in Bremen with his wife, Wendy Pieh, a Bremen selectman and a former state representative, where they raise their own breed of goats, the North American Cashmere Goat.
