By Marleneharris-Taylor
The Blade
PERRYSBURG, Ohio — Dr. Chris Goliver, a Perrysburg emergency-room physician, has spent his career pushing the envelope and taking calculated risks. Most of the time it has moved him forward in positive, unexpected ways, but it has also fueled the daredevil inside.
The 48-year-old father and husband is at the pinnacle of his career as medical director of Mercy’s stand-alone emergency room that opened about a year ago at 2621 Eckel Junction Rd. He will also oversee a similar Mercy facility slated to open next year in Sylvania Township.
The emergency-care centers are his brainchildren.
Dr. Goliver knew these type of emergency facilities were common elsewhere in the United States but absent from the Toledo area. He leaned on all of his past experiences and relationships forged in northwest Ohio to work with Mercy to open this kind of ER in his home community.
“I will be the first to admit the stand-alone ER is not the cure-all [for medicine]. What it is, is just one more tool to hopefully be able to improve the delivery of medicine,” he said.
Dr. Goliver was raised in Defiance in a family of firefighters. Both his grandfathers, his father, and his brother were all firefighters, so initially he planned to follow in their footsteps.
“That’s all I knew,” he said.
While a 16-year-old student at Ayersville High School, he joined a firefighter cadet program sponsored by the Richland Township volunteer fire department.
“Basically it’s a firefighter-in-training. We would assist and go out on scenes,” Dr. Goliver said.
After high-school graduation, he was on a clear path to becoming a firefighter and a paramedic. He attended fire training and received a bachelor’s degree in fire science from the University of Cincinnati.
“He did very well in the academy program,” said Frank Conway, his former instructor and current chief of the Ohio Fire Marshal’s fire-prevention bureau. “He wanted that challenge to go to the next level. He wasn’t satisfied in making the grade. He truly wanted to succeed.”
Dr. Goliver rose through the ranks after working for several small fire departments in the area and at age 29 was appointed deputy chief of the Perrysburg Fire Department.
His path to eventually becoming Perrysburg’s fire chief, though, ran into one of those unexpected twists. A psychological exam he took as a condition of becoming become deputy chief revealed he had aptitude and characteristics common to medical doctors.
He initially dismissed the idea, but after a few months of pushing papers around in his new administrative role, he began to miss the action.
Dr. Goliver found it as a nontraditional medical student at what was then the Medical College of Ohio. The workload — the amount of reading required of students — was astounding, he said.
“It was interesting having a family with two small kids. That was the time that my first marriage ended. It was stressful. The budget was tight. A treat was going to Chuck E. Cheese with the kids. It was definitely a lifestyle change, there is no doubt about that,” Dr. Goliver said.
His longtime friend, Keith Moosman — who retired from Perrysburg’s fire department as assistant chief — said he didn’t see Dr. Goliver much during his medical-school years because he was so busy. But Mr. Moosman was not surprised that Dr. Goliver made the jump to physician.
Mr. Moosman said both jobs are stressful and require good judgment, and the preparation Dr. Goliver received working as a paramedic all those years was invaluable to him in medical school and as a emergency-room physician.
He has also seen the lighter side of his friend, whom he called a great prankster. He recalled a time when they were golfing.
“He once put an exploding golf ball [on the tee], so the guy came up to, hit it, and the golf ball went poof. Everybody was rolling. They couldn’t drive that tee, they were laughing so hard,” Mr. Moosman said.
Dr. Goliver’s adventures with his friends almost turned tragic a few years ago during a ski trip in Vail, Colo. The group came to an expert-level ski run called the China Bowl. His friends decided to go around, but Dr. Goliver took a chance.
While accelerating downhill, he made a split decision to ski toward some black poles he thought marked the entrance to a chute. Their actual purpose was to warn skiers away from the crest of a cliff.
Dr. Goliver quickly found himself flying through the air trying to brace for impact.
“This is gonna hurt,” he recalled thinking. “Thankfully they had a lot of fresh snow, because when I hit the ground I was buried in snow up to my hips.”
He made it through that close call and others in the past. He said buildings have collapsed on him, and he’s been burned. Those experiences have tempered his actions, and he’s now older and wiser — but still unafraid to be bold.
That boldness has landed him in leadership roles repeatedly during his career. At MCO he was student-body president. When he began his residency at St. Vincent Medical Center, he was chosen chief resident. He later became the director of Life Flight at St. Vincent.
“To me that was the best of all worlds. I was out in a community setting, getting back to that country boy. I could teach emergency medicine by working part-time in the ER at St. V’s and by being medical director of flight I was out in the streets again. I was with my firefighters,” Dr. Goliver said.
He has also continued his fire connection by being the medical director for numerous northwest Ohio fire departments over the past five years.
He keeps getting asked to be an administrator, but Dr. Goliver said he wants to stay in the trenches. At the ER he works nights, weekends, and holidays like the rest of the staff, and as director he continues to treat patients.
“The other thing I like about emergency medicine is you are able to effect an immediate impact. It’s kind of like firefighting. When you come in things are gonna happen pretty quickly,“ Dr. Goliver said.
He is proud of what he has accomplished and said the emergency-care center is surpassing goals set before it opened. When Mercy officials announced the Perrysburg facility, they projected it would draw about 20 patients a day, but during its first year its average is already up to about 30 patients per day, said Sarah Bednarski, a Mercy spokesman.
“He’s got good judgment and leads by example. He is also bubbly, energetic, and personable. You follow a great leader like that,” Mr. Moosman said.
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©2014 The Blade (Toledo, Ohio)