Erick Bengel: Everyday People: 'It requires a lot of flexibility and problem-solving'

May 23—Shannon Berry, an emergency physician at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Astoria, wondered whether she could become a doctor.

She was fascinated with physics and astronomy but realized in college that those fields weren't very social. As a scientist, she wanted to work with human beings rather than in a lab.

At the University of Washington, she applied to the college's nursing school, nurse practitioner school and medical school at the same time, believing the last one was out of reach.

"I just had a lot of self-doubt," Berry recalled.

She got accepted to all three programs.

After UW, Berry had a residency in emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital, which now employs her at Columbia Memorial. She joined the small critical access hospital in 2017, commuting from southeast Portland until she and her husband moved to Astoria in 2019.

Berry is also the medical director at Medix Ambulance Service, where she oversees personnel education, reviews medical cases and develops protocols.

Before medical school, she wanted to be an obstetrician-gynecologist. Her goal was to open a birthing center.

But the emergency room, the diversity of patients and their conditions, called to her.

"I grew up pretty poor and without health insurance," she said, "and so it really meant a lot to me to be able to treat people from all walks of life regardless of their ability to pay."

In the emergency room, Barry treats people with medical emergencies, mental health crises and traumatic injuries. From people suffering from heart attacks and strokes, to psychotic or suicidal thoughts, to the fallout of car crashes, Berry and her colleagues see anybody who comes through the door.

"You have to know a little bit about everything," she said.

Even without a pandemic adding strain on hospital staff, ERs confront complex social issues — such as the effects of homelessness and intoxication — that seem to take up ever more staff time and resources.

People toward the end of life — those who can't care for themselves at home and have no one to watch over them — often don't know where else to turn. There's nothing imminently wrong with them, but they live with the threat of something happening — a fall, an inability to feed themselves or get to the bathroom — after they're discharged.

Berry worries about them when they leave.

"I do my best to address these issues, and a lot of times I just feel ineffective and kind of helpless, and wanting to help, but I just can't because of the constraints of the health care system," she said.

Despite the challenges, Berry loves her job — the collaborative environment, the team approach, the interactions with her patients. "It requires a lot of flexibility and problem-solving, and those are skills that really call to me, that make the job very engaging," she said.

Originally from Virginia, Berry is a world traveler, food tourist and "Northwest action figure-type," she said — a skier, hiker, biker and outdoor enthusiast.

Now that she lives at the coast, Berry wants to get into sailing, fishing and crabbing. She is less interested in surfing because of the shark-based injuries she sees in the emergency department.

She also plays soccer, and finds herself wondering why there isn't a women's soccer league on the North Coast. "I'm thinking of trying to figure out if we can make that happen," she said.