Sue Dyle PA-C, MS, BSN, RN
· Physician Assistant
· ICU & Shock Trauma RN
· EMT
· Wilderness Medicine certified
· EMS Instructor
· FEMA Instructor
· Stop the Bleed Instructor
· Mapleton CERT Team Leader
I started my life in medicine as an EMT in 1980 working in the local ER as well as a side gig in stable patient fixed wing air transport. Medicine captured me and I enrolled in nursing school while working as an EMT. I worked as an ER nurse then spent 12 years in Shock Trauma and the ICU. I helped open the first nurse-operated telephone triage service in Utah, where my flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants skills learned in the ICU came in handy!
I was drawn to the Dark Side and spent some time in nursing admin in charge of 3 ambulatory out-patient clinics and a 24 hour short stay unit – again, the first of its kind in Utah. Admin wasn’t for me; I needed the adrenaline and challenge of hands-on patient care.
In 1994 I graduated from the Physician Assistant program at the U of U, then began working at the Utah State Prison. I was in charge of patients with infectious diseases, including HIV, AIDS and TB. In Utah, state inmates make license plates in a manufacturing shop, which provided me with plenty of suturing opportunities, as well as the usual “slip and fall” injuries associated with prison inmates. I completed plastic surgery training at UC San Diego because of the need for complicated wound care at the state prison, which allowed us to keep a lot of our surgical repairs “in house”.
After 3 years of that, I moved to the private sector where I spent 10 years in Urgent Care and Family Medicine. I then moved to Women’s Health, where I spent another 10 years, pursuing extra-curricular interests in hiking, camping and guiding, and completing certifications in Wilderness Medicine along the way.
I’m now 99% retired, mostly spending my time hiking with my golden retriever, gardening and vacuuming dog hair off everything. I also seem to spend a lot of time repairing the local neighborhood boo-boos on my kitchen table. I’m currently the volunteer Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Director for my city, training volunteers in emergency response. This includes the basics of disaster medicine, Search and Rescue operations, mass casualty incidents, all within the framework of the National Incident Management System (NIMS). It’s a great program!