Combating the Military Physician Shortage

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Dr. Tyrone Krause, Chief of Cardio-thoracic Surgery at Jersey City Medical Center, to discuss his decision to join the Navy in an effort combat the military physician shortage.

11/2/18 #2174

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Welcome to "One on One" I'm Steve Adubato, it's my pleasure to introduce for the first time with us, Dr. Tyrone Krause, Chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Jersey City Medical Center, good to see you doctor. Thank you. You have an amazing story give us the Reader's Digest version of it. Oh sure. Basically I enlisted in the Navy as a reservist. I'm 63 years old, and I do cardiothoracic surgery. The Navy has a shortage in cardiothoracic surgeons, and that's how this all came about. What's the "this?" Well joining the Navy as a cardiothoracic surgeon, as a reservist. The...as you know there's always age limits on joining anything, any area of the military. I required a waiver in order to get approved and get through the vetting process to join the Navy as a reservist. Why was it so important to you? Well my daughter enlisted in the Navy as an officer, and her recruiter told me that they had a shortage, and a couple of things went through my mind. One was, it'd be nice doing something that my daughter was actually the only through. We do a lot of things together, myself and my daughter, we climb mountains, we jog together... You're close. ...we've done Kilimanjaro and Mont Blanc, and a number of other mountains. And I looked at this as another climbing another mountain with my daughter. Having the opportunity to do something, but really also when they said that there was a shortage in cardiothoracic surgeons, this is what I do best. I've been doing it for a long time. I felt like I was still in my prime, so if I can help the military and our country,let me do it. You know fascinating... [COUGHS] ...excuse me, some of the parts that's there are fascinating. Your daughter commissioned you? Yes. How's that work? Yeah the...and this was another exciting thing. She's on the USS Ramage as a officer in charge of the Engineering Department. And her captain went to her... We're looking at photos of this right now, go ahead. And her captain went to her and said, it'd be great to get some good publicity, do you would you like to commission your father, which is very unusual, on the deck of our ship. And so that's she asked me, I said well of course if it's going to help you and I...as a matter of fact, I thought all of this was primarily going to be helping her, but since I've done this I've been getting the attention not her. Which might be a good thing. So she commissioned me, she swore me in, and I was her first salute. Her first..."