John Rubin

Rubin hails from health care family
ER doctor ‘spends his days making other people’s days better’

By AMY NEFF ROTH
Observer-Dispatch

Most parents are proud of their doctor-sons, but Dr. John Rubin takes a lot of ribbing from his family over his career choice.

That’s because Rubin, an emergency room physician at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Utica and a city native, comes from a large family overwhelmed by nurses, including his wife Kim, both his parents and three sisters. (A brother and two more sisters don’t work in health care.)

Rubin, who now lives in Richfield Springs, routinely works with his parents and two of his sisters who work in St. Elizabeth’s intensive-care unit and in a local trauma surgeon’s office. His mother regularly embarrasses Rubin by calling the ER and asking for Johnny, he said.

But whatever jokes Rubin may endure from his family, Rubin has earned the respect of his ER colleagues for his compassionate care of emergency patients and his extensive volunteer activities that call on his medical skills.

“He spends his days making other people’s days better, by giving reassurance and hope to all,” wrote emergency room nurse Korinne Smith in a letter nominating Rubin for the Accent on Excellence Award. “His bedside manner is comforting to all, which is why he has become very well known all over the community, not to mention one of the most popular doctors in the Mohawk Valley.

“Even on his days away from the ER, he is still donating his time to others … I have had the pleasure of working side by side with Dr. John Rubin in the ER at St. E’s for seven years now. I have seen his compassion. I have seen the skills in action. I have seen him save lives that, on arrival, nobody thought could be possible.”

But if you want to hear about an employee’s bad side, go to his boss. Rubin lives too far away from the hospital, griped his boss, Dr. Tim Page, medical director of St. Elizabeth’s ER. Then Page stopped, unable, when asked, to think of anything worse to say about his employee.

“He’s an all around great person, excellent physician. Very personable. Very confident ... He’s a local person that is doing well,” Page said of Rubin. “I think that really needs to be emphasized, that somebody from the area is a good doctor and a smart person and applied himself tremendously.”

In fact, Page made Rubin his assistant director last year, after Rubin had only been on the job four or five years, a big step, according to Page.

Patients feel comfortable with Rubin, a fact Page chalks up to the confidence Rubin exudes. “I would trust him if I was lying in the bed,” Page said.

Another “huge” issue with Rubin is his volunteer work, Page said. Rubin volunteers as: medical-control doctor for Mercy Flight Central, which means he answers questions from the paramedic and nurse on emergency helicopters; medical director for both Rural/Metro Medical Services in Herkimer and Kunkel Ambulance Services in Utica; medical director of a half dozen area volunteer ambulance squads; paramedic education director for Midstate EMS, which involves a lot of time teaching paramedics; medical director for the ski patrol at McCauley Mountain in Old Forge, where Rubin has skied since early childhood; and a doctor in the medical tent at the Utica Boilermaker Road Race.

Doesn’t he get a bit overwhelmed having so many different people call on him for medical expertise? “You just get used to it,” Rubin said. “It tends to really not be an issue. I don’t really think about that. If Mercy Flight calls and they have a problem, well, they have a problem. I like to help them out.
“I like to give back to the community. Being from here, it’s nice to be a part of it.”

He did admit to sometimes having trouble waking up when his beeper goes off in the wee hours with a call from Mercy Flight. His two puppies hear the beep and start to bark, which wakes up Rubin’s wife, who then makes sure he answers his beeper, Rubin said.

But Rubin apparently really enjoys a lot of his volunteer work. He skies McCauley Mountain at least every other weekend in the winter. The most fun, he said, is the weekend of the big snowmobile race, during which he pulls on his boots and wades through the snow to reach injured snowmobilers, none of whom have been seriously hurt so far.

Rubin does have a few hobbies away from medicine. He likes to road- and mountain-bike, ski, fly fish and run around the park with his dogs and his wife, who works in the emergency-room at Bassett Healthcare in Cooperstown.

He also likes to travel with Kim, whom he met when they were students at Utica College, before either had settled on a career in emergency medicine, he said. Even back in those days, though, Rubin worked as a lifeguard and a ski patrolman, he said.

“Then I was a basic EMT. When I was in the hospital, I realized that the emergency department was never a dull moment. They saw the sickest of the sick,” Rubin said.
“And they saw such a wide range of problems that you have to be a jack of all trades. And I liked that aspect of kind of knowing a little bit about everything. I also liked the lifestyle of working shift work ... It’s never a dull moment. Your time seems to fly by while you’re there.”