Consider This

Better health begins with knowledge

Dr. John McElligott, founder of the Professional Drivers Medical Depot (www.pd-md.com), has been focusing on driver health issues for 15 years. Over the Road and Pro Trucker magazines interviewed Dr. McElligott earlier this year at the Mid-America Trucking Show, where he talked to countless truck drivers who stopped by the Over the Road/Pro Trucker booth to have their blood pressure checked. The first part of the interview appeared in last month’s issue of Over the Road. Following are more excerpts:

Is it fair to say you’re one of the country’s foremost authorities on medical issues as they relate to truck drivers?

Well, for a doctor who’s in the trenches, I’d say yes. I’m not an ivory tower doctor on faculty at some highfalutin medical school that is telling the Federal Motor Carrier people here’s what you need to do. I’m a guy that’s down there in the trenches who knows what needs to be done, and that’s what we’re doing.

Truck drivers, as a community of human beings, don’t seem to be very healthy or health conscious. Is that accurate?

It is. Everybody says, well, it’s their choice, it’s their lifestyle, but what it boils down to and the reason I got into this, is we as doctors in the medical profession, have not educated them as we have people who are home-based. In other words, they’re on the road, they have no way of stopping and sitting down and shooting the breeze with a doctor or nurse practitioner. So we, as a medical profession, have not done our job. We’ve let them become the way they are due to a lack of education.
     My group decided to do something about it. First, we studied the situation for about seven years. We interviewed drivers from all over the country. I went to truck stops everywhere: Illinois, Texas, Wyoming, you name it, any place I could stop and talk to a driver. After 7,000 interviews, I decided that we had several problems. One, and most important, was education. Teaching them what they need to know to take care of themselves. Two, is diet. We met with Petro, Weight Watchers and others and said, let’s come up with a diet that works. As a doctor, I think that the Weight Watchers diet is the best because you get to eat anything you want. It’s a diet that’s based on portions, so it’s very easy to do. Many Petro, TA and other truck stops now offer it. It’s good for the travel centers, but more importantly, it’s healthy for the truckers.
     The third thing is the doctors and the nurse practitioners who are treating truck drivers, and that is where we come in. The PD-MD clinics will be located out on the road, and our medical staff people will know the truck drivers and how to take care of them.

Photo caption:
Dr. John McElligott