Alumnus thrives practicing wilderness medicine

As the only physician at an Antarctic research station, Shawn Vainio, MD ’03, was a one-man medical team.

He shot and read X-rays, performed root canals, stocked the pharmacy, checked water for contaminants, maintained lab equipment, conducted physicals — all amid a small corner “office” crammed with medical gear and a lone patient bed.

From Antarctica to Alaska to the Himalayas, Vainio thrives on practicing medicine in desolate surroundings. He recounted his decades of wilderness medicine experience to an audience of students, trainees and faculty during a recent UB Global Health Grand Rounds talk, “Living Wilderness Medicine in Alaska, Antarctica and India,” at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.  

As a medical student at UB, Vainio took his first trip with the Himalayan Health Exchange program, which brings health care workers and students to remote Himalayan populations in Himachal Pradesh in northern India and other areas. Twenty-two years later, he still makes annual excursions to the Himalayas.

Vainio, who practices family medicine, shared numerous photos from his journeys to the Himalayas depicting villagers and their more traditional, highly resourceful way of life: Women donning handmade clothing traverse the mountain slopes carrying hand-woven baskets. A stone mill grinds barley mixed with yak butter for the day’s breakfast. People burn piles of dung for warmth amid the treeless landscape. 

“They do all the same things we do; they just do it in different ways,” Vainio said.

Amid the largely Buddhist populations, people don’t eat meat. They’re physically active, working outside with their hands. They don’t smoke or drink. Their lifestyle, Vainio said, is quite healthy. 

Still, serious diseases like tuberculosis and, less commonly now, leprosy afflict some Himalayans. But their No. 1 complaint isn’t far off from Western patients. “The most common complaint in primary care is that there is a ton of back pain,” Vainio said, showing a picture of a woman carrying a massive sack on her back.

Far up in the Himalayas, there are no drugstores carrying common medicine like Tylenol. So Vainio and the medical teams bring some $70,000 worth of medications on each trip. Still, drugs like Tylenol are distributed in controlled quantities to prevent overdosing, Vainio explained. Some Himalayan regions have community health centers for the villagers, but often they’re several hours’ drive, or an even longer walk, away.

Over a few weeks, the medical teams travel from village to village, on foot and by car, when possible. The roads, which see massive snowfall, avalanches and landslides, are passable only from June to August.

“Traffic can be a problem. But it’s a little different than our idea of traffic here in the Western world,” Vainio noted, sharing a picture of a large group of sheep crowding the roadway.

Vainio led a team of 23 people on his most recent trip to the Himalayas in August, including five U.S. medical residents, himself and a collection of medical students. On any given trip, students hail from the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland and other countries. 

With such variety in countries of origin and medical training, team members have plentiful teaching and learning opportunities. “When I’m over there, I give everything I’ve got,” Vainio said. “I give everything from the moment I wake up to when I go to bed because I want the students and residents who are taking the time to come over there to learn as much as they can.”

Throughout medical school and beyond, Vainio has never lost sight of his desire to practice medicine in faraway locations and help Indigenous people in need. “He kept his vision alive through the years,” recalled David M. Holmes, clinical associate professor of family medicine and director of the Jacobs School’s Global Medicine Program.

“A lot of people come to medical school and they want to save the world,” said Holmes, who knew Vainio as a medical student. “But Dr. Vainio’s really kept his motivation going through the years.”

“I love this place,” Vainio said of his native Western New York. “But I also love big mountains,” he added, underscoring his longstanding passion for travel and serving Indigenous populations.

While in his third year of family medicine residency at the University of Utah, Vainio jumped on the chance to work as a family doctor at a remote medical center on Alaska’s Kodiak Island.

His duties spanned the medical spectrum: covering the ER and ICU, delivering babies, serving as a pediatrician, providing elder care. “It was amazing, it was everything I’d ever dreamed of,” he said.

Amid the rugged archipelago, accessible only by boat or plane, patient injuries could be dire. “Everything from submerged boats, capsized boats, people falling off mountains, bear attacks, hypothermia, frostbite,” Vainio recalled.

In 2007, Vainio spent seven months as the sole medical provider at Antarctica’s Palmer Station, which houses 50 researchers and personnel in the summer and only 15 people in the winter. In addition to the lone patient bed, Vainio’s small clinic included a centrifuge, mini ventilator, X-ray equipment, pharmaceutical supplies and ZOLL machine for cardiac events.

He did everything himself.

Based in Bethel, Alaska, Vainio currently practices medicine with the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation. Many of his patients are Yupik Alaska natives — some 26,000 people spread among 58 villages in an area the size of Oregon spanning from the Bering Sea to the foothills of the Alaska Range mountains. 

Amid much of the vast tundra, access is limited to using boats in the summer and snowmobiles in the winter — there are no roads. So Vainio frequently uses telemedicine to coordinate care with sub-regional clinics and community health aides in remote villages. “You can extend the care, just like I do in India, out to those remote places,” he said.

Wiring a jaw shut or amputating a mostly severed finger may not be typical family doctor duties, but they’re tasks Vainio has had to learn. He encouraged future family physicians to push their boundaries but never be hesitant to consult the specialists who can help guide through less practiced procedures. “The more you take that next step, the more it makes you better.”    

In 2022, Vainio was named Alaska Family Physician of the Year by the Alaska Academy of Family Physicians. In 2023, he was honored with the American Academy of Family Physicians Humanitarian Award.

As evidenced by the variety of his own experiences, Vainio noted that the range and extent of family doctors’ medical expertise and tasks can be surprising. “The thing I tell people is, with family medicine, you should do what your community needs,” he said. “With family medicine, you can do so many things.”