AN INTRODUCTORY INTERVIEW
WITH CORY P. COPPERSMITH
by KERMIT J. FROG
K: I'm here with Cory Patrick Coppersmith, newly-minted Cannon Fellow in the MSW program at the University of Pittsburgh. Many of you may already know this eccentric young fellow--ha-ha--did you catch that?
C: I'm sorry?
K: I just called you a "fellow."
C: So?
K: It was a double-entendre *cough*. Nevermind. Anyhoo, I understand you are now taking SWINT 2025, Social Work practice in Integrated Healthcare. How come you're taking the class?
C: Well, it came as a surprise when we had to take 2 unexpected courses, but it honestly I have no idea how I'd function in integrated health without going through the SWINT 2025 curriculum.
I need to understand the history of social work in medical settings, and I need to also learn the different approaches and models used in an integrated healthcare. Although I have had a little taste of integrated health at the RTC I worked in, community health centers and hospitals are far different settings with much more complex bureaucratic, political, interpersonal, and triage dynamics.
K: Looking at that syllabus, what's the thing that piques your interest the most?
C: Hm. It's a tough choice, actually, but I'd have to say the cross-cultural stuff. I'm working with refugees from Bhutan and Iraq, primarily. I've traveled a bit, and I have a lot of international friends, but it's one thing to make friends and another to try to help somebody overcome trauma when you don't even speak their language. It's intimidating and I want to learn to do my best for them.
K: That's really neato! I agree. Miss Piggy and I traveled quite a bit back in our day. Once, we went to the Mekong delta. It was very enjoyable until....well, some old ladies tried to skewer me and put me over coals.
C: Tried to skewer you?
K: Well, yes. But they tried to do that in France, too. Where was I? Oh. What in the syllabus seems the least interesting?
C: Motivational interviewing. For five years, every interaction I had with the teenagers I worked with, every assessment, every intervention carried the flavor of the stages of change and the methods of motivational interviewing. It became an almost robotic way I was expected to respond to kids, and it's something I'm not very interested in learning more about--even though it works like a charm. I have to say M.I. is truly a Jedi Mind Trick.
K: Well, you've alluded to some experience you have already--what are you bringing to the table that makes this course a relevant choice for you?
C: Well, I've mentioned that I was able to work on an integrated health team before. I collaborated weekly with LCSWs, an RN, and a Psychiatrist about (mainly) behavioral interventions at Gateway Academy, an RTC in Salt Lake City.
But aside from that, wilderness gave me a crash course in emergency medicine and first aid. As lead staff at the wilderness program, I had to take an intensive 70 hour accredited course on wilderness medicine and recertify every two years. We learned triage, how to move somebody if they had a spinal injury, and essentially how to deal with a medical crisis when help is at least an hour away. I know how to fix testicular tortion, how to administer an epi-pen, how to get an insect out of somebody's ear canal. How to pack somebody's severed finger in snow.
K: Yikes! Did you ever have to do any of that stuff?
C: Fortunately, no. Very, very bad things do happen in the wilderness, though, and the fact that you are so far from an ambulance is the main reason it's sometimes lethal. One friend of mine died in an avalanche (not on the job). Another friend of mine was the lead staff when a girl stabbed herself in the heart (not at my program). However, those are catastrophic outliers. Normally, we only do very mundane first aid. I spent at least fifteen minutes a day bandaging, cleaning wounds and blisters, treating foot fungus, looking at rashes, etc. I've even had the unfortunate need to treat frostbite. Everybody knows first aid, but few folks have to use it like wilderness staff do. Working at the healthcare center, I sometimes feel like I'm a barber from medieval times who's been brought into the twenty-first century.
K: Well, are you trying to bleed anybody?
C: No.
K: Put leeches on them?
C: Maybe.
K: Tell us, personally, a few things that are closer to home. What's Cory all about?
C: I would say I like to learn how to cook food from all over the world. Ethiopian, Indian, Thai, Korean. My kitchen smells like all kinds of things. I'm a Buddhist, and I practice way less than I ought to, but my teachers are Tibetan and I lived at a buddhist retreat center for 2 summers as a resident staff. I know a lot of words in Sanskrit and if you get me started talking about mythology I'll never shut up.
I also love telling really long, elaborate dirty jokes. My favorite is called "The Pianist," and if you enjoy those kinds of things I'd be happy to tell you over beer, coffee, tea, or Orange Julius.
