Division History, 1972–1978

Although the naysayers were vocal, Guenter was undaunted.

“My academic boss in Winnipeg said, ‘You know they’re going to turn that medical school into a Safeway store.'”

If Guenter’s first impression of his new employer was somewhat tarnished, his greeting upon arrival certainly didn’t add any shine. It was Christmas break and the university was closed. He showed up for work at the relatively new Foothills Hospital to discover no one had any idea who he was or why he was there. The receptionist called around the half- empty building until she finally found someone who could help. A confused new colleague opened his own office and told Guenter to store his belongings there until they figured out where he was supposed to be.

The situation was slow to improve. A year later, they were still sharing that small office.

Guenter had been hired as an experienced lung specialist in the hope he could help fashion a training program and establish a lung disease subspecialty. But the fledgling medical school had its own bigger struggles to manage, not the least of which was its challenged reputation among the skeptical Canadian and international medical community.
 

“The whole city lacked specialized expertise,” he recalls. “Whether you were talking about heart disease or neurology or any of the areas where we now simply expect it to be in place. I was told I wouldn’t be able to make a living here as there was no need for a lung specialist.”

At the time there was an environment of distrust across the medical community, which Guenter says prevented many physicians from seeking the opinions of outside specialists like him. It took three months for Guenter to receive his first referral. And even then it was from one of his own colleagues at the hospital.

“He just felt sorry for me,” Guenter laughs. “But I made sure I did a good job of value added on that patient so I’d get a few more!”

And there were other hills to climb besides convincing local doctors of the benefits of specialized opinions. The Foothills was only five years old, still half-empty and much maligned. CT scans and MRIs were far off in the future. The ICU had only four beds and a collection of primitive ventilators. There were no piped gasses or central suction.

It was Guenter’s job to help turn this rudimentary setup into a full teaching hospital, complete with pulmonary laboratories, a more robust ICU and outpatient clinics, and a world-class curriculum that was strong enough to produce competent medical trainees over the course of a three-year program.

In case that wasn’t enough to take on, Guenter and colleague Dr. David Shaw were also busy trying to convince the Royal College to accredit the University of Calgary for a postgraduate Pulmonary Training program.

The situation put them in a catch-22. Without accreditation, they couldn’t attract trainees. Without specialized trainees, they couldn’t attract the broad spectrum of patients they’d need to win the college’s approval. They decided to bring in some help.

“Protocols were pretty light in terms of recruiting back in those days,” says Guenter. “We started looking for one key person, someone between 30 and 40 years old. Someone with moxie.”