Mary Ellen Doty has decades of frontline medical experience, including almost 20 years in rural Alaska. In her recent memoir, “Medicine at 50 Below,” published by Nelson Bond Publishing in February, Doty shares firsthand experiences of practicing medicine in the state. And in June, Doty hosted book signing events in Fairbanks and Anchorage.
In an interview, Doty said she moved to Alaska to serve as a nurse practitioner in the village of Tanana to help pay off her student loans. That was after earning her master’s degree at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and though the job was for two years, Doty stuck around for five.
“The people who live there were so amazingly supportive of me," she said. "I mean, picture this, I was a green nurse practitioner directly out of school, and ended up being the sole provider out there for the bulk of five years."
Doty went on to work for another 14 years in various parts of Alaska, from Fort Yukon to Prince of Wales Island.
She said she noticed how the state and other parts of the country had trouble recruiting healthcare providers for small, rural communities. During a medical conference in Dallas, something clicked.
“I was having lunch with maybe six or eight other medical providers. Almost every one of them said, ‘Yeah, I'm so tired of corporate medicine. I have to see 40 patients a day. I don't get time off. I would love to have more work-life balance.’ And so that's when I'm like, 'Oh, I wonder if they would come to Alaska. And sure enough, they did, lots of them,” she said.
Wilderness Medical Staffing is Doty’s idea come to life. The 15-year-old business connects healthcare professionals with remote communities across Alaska and the American West. Today, Doty says the company staffs about 150 to 200 clinics, working alongside many tribal councils and tribal consortiums.
Now, Doty has written about her time in the bush and her business. “Medicine at 50 Below: A Memoir of Healthcare, Healing, and Hope in Rural Alaska” tells the story of her experiences in places she grew to love.
In it, she says learning from patients and connecting with the communities helped her bring more meaning to medicine.
“It's been the delight of my life to put this company together. Because I know that honestly, what I can do with my own two hands, which I did for years, as a medical provider, I can multiply that by 150 every day,” she said.
Doty said it was easy at first to start building a business and writing a book, but there were times she wanted to call it quits.
On both fronts, though, she found her way through.
“Until things get going, it just takes a lot of grit. I do talk about that in the book as well. It takes a lot of grit to just keep going. And there was a point in time when I wanted to stop,” she said.
In the memoir’s epilogue, the author asks herself a question: “What have I done?”
Doty says it’s the same question she asked herself when she first moved to Alaska. But 30 years later, she says her answer is now filled with the wonder of working with rural communities in a way that can improve the lives of both the people providing care and the people receiving it.