Paul Auerbach

Abstract

Emergency and wilderness medicine expert. Born Jan 4, 1951, in Plainfield, NJ, USA, he died of brain cancer on June 23, 2021, in Los Altos, CA, USA, aged 70 years. As an early pioneer of wilderness medicine, Paul Auerbach regularly encountered gaps in the field, including insufficient academic resources or collaborating organisations. Yet “he was the kind of man who wasn’t just going to identify gaps”, said Andra Blomkalns, the Redlich Family Professor and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University, CA, USA, where Auerbach spent much of his career. “He was going to fill them.” Auerbach helped found the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) to foster education and research and he edited Auerbach's Wilderness Medicine. “If there was a vision he had of something that didn’t exist, he had the strength to almost will it into existence”, said Grant Lipman, Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at Stanford's School of Medicine and Director of the Stanford Wilderness Medicine Section and Fellowship. Colleagues said Auerbach was always eager to collaborate in realising these initiatives. “He was like a searchlight with this beam of intensity that would focus on people and pass them opportunities”, Lipman said. “He would take so much joy in the accomplishments of others.” Auerbach completed undergraduate studies in religion at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA, and remained there for medical school. After graduating in 1977, he pursued a residency in emergency medicine at what was then the University of California Los Angeles Center for the Health Sciences. After completing the residency in 1980, he took a series of academic appointments and jobs in the private sector. That included a position as Chief of Stanford's Division of Emergency Medicine from 1991 and 1995. In 2005, he returned to the division, which ultimately became its own department in 2015, and retired in 2019 as the Redlich Family Professor Emeritus. Although Auerbach's positions centred on emergency medicine, he combined those with his efforts to develop wilderness medicine. In 1983, he co-founded WMS and then served as President from 1987 to 1989. “His vision was the pole star we moved toward”, said Jennifer Dow, an emergency medicine specialist based in Anchorage, AK, USA, and WMS Secretary. That vision was “to promote medicine in austere environments, to protect those who are enjoying those wilderness environments, and to give those who take care of them the tools to perform their jobs”, she explained. Auerbach also plunged into disaster medicine in 2010, agreeing to assist in the relief effort in Haiti after the January earthquake. “When things happened, like natural disasters, earthquakes, Paul was there in person trying to help organise rescue operations and apply all the lessons of wilderness medicine”, said Robert Schoene, an attending physician in pulmonary and critical care medicine at St Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco, CA, USA, and a past WMS President. Dow spent time with Auerbach after he returned from Haiti and said despite the help he had provided, he was “overwhelmed because he couldn’t do more.” Rather than dwelling on those feelings, Dow said, he “channelled that into, ‘How can I help other people do this when it happens again?’” That led him to create the Stanford Emergency Medicine Program for Emergency Response, which prepares Stanford physicians and nurses to rapidly deploy to emergencies. Auerbach also joined relief efforts after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. Luanne Freer, the founder and Director of Everest ER, a seasonal medical clinic at the Everest base camp in Nepal, and a past WMS president, travelled with Auerbach on the mission and said he was instrumental in “galvanising this group of talented individuals and getting us out to do meaningful work”. Auerbach had already been active in Nepal before the earthquake, assisting local efforts to establish an ambulance service in the country. Rajesh Gongal, the Founding President of what became the Nepal Ambulance Service that launched in 2011, said the organisers were linked to emergency medicine experts at Stanford early in their efforts, including Auerbach, who helped fundraise for the new service. “I don’t think we would be where we are if it hadn’t been for him”, said Gongal, a surgeon and the Vice-Chancellor of Patan Academy of Health Sciences in Lalitpur, Nepal. “What he thought was important was to make sure you embrace fun, bravery, and compassion in your career and in your life”, Freer said. “When you look back at his life, he did that.” Auerbach leaves his wife, Sherry, his daughter, Lauren, his sons, Brian and Daniel, his mother, a brother, and a sister.