Captain Mark Burkhart maneuvers the 140-foot twin-engine towboat alongside a
barge with far more grace than most people bring to parking a car. Under his
deft guidance, his vessel, Ingram Barge’s Francis R. Keegan, uses its 4,200 horsepower to dance along the current of the
Cumberland River and ease into place.
He casts a “Not bad, eh?” smile over his shoulder at a visitor aboard his boat, Teresa Roberts, R.N.,
executive physical nurse from the Vanderbilt Dayani Center.
Roberts isn’t just some random visitor to Burkhart’s riverboat workplace. They are partners in an innovative program, called
Partners in Towboat Wellness, in which captains, pilots, and other personnel
from Ingram Barge get comprehensive physicals, treadmill tests and healthy
living guidance under a corporate agreement between the company and the Dayani
Center.
The partnership began January 2004, developed with input from both parties and
updated each year to add additional programs, services and wellness outreach,
Roberts said. The Dayani team includes, in addition to Roberts, two part-time
physicians (Robert Workman, M.D., and Mark Jacokes, M.D.), an exercise
physiologist (Zafer Karabulut, Ph.D.), and other health care professsionals,
including registered dietitians. Roberts has been involved in the program since
its beginning. The Ingram program, which has more than 600 participants, is the
largest of about 40 corporate health contracts managed by Dayani.
Roberts, who has been at Vanderbilt since 1986 and at the Dayani Center since
1997, is the nurse dedicated to assisting with the comprehensive physical and
U. S. Coast Guard (USCG) license renewal process. She works closely with the
National Maritime Center in West Virginia, and recently became the Dayani
Center’s first certified health coach.
“In my health coaching role, I partner with Ingram Barge associates to empower
them to take control of their health through meaningful lifestyle changes that
can reduce their risk factors for developing chronic, many times preventable,
diseases. And, along the way, they discover that they are not just healthier,
but they feel better!”
The reasoning behind Partners in Towboat Wellness is simple. Captains and pilots
of riverboats have to meet certain health standards to renew their USCG
licenses every five years, much as airline pilots need health clearance to fly.
The Coast Guard requires all applicants that have a merchant marine license to
complete a comprehensive medical and
physical evaluation. Through Partners in Towboat Wellness, interventions are implemented to decrease and/or control health problems that could lead to
disqualification as a licensed mariner. Adhering to strict guidelines affirm
that mariners can perform their job without underlying medical conditions that
may potentially disqualify them for service or may lead to unsafe practices on
the inland waterways.
Keeping captains and pilots healthy is good for them, of course, and also good
for the company, which loses fewer employee workdays to delayed license
renewals.
Since the license renewal cycle is five years, the Dayani program checks each
participating Ingram employee every two-and-a-half-years, providing plenty of
time to work on correcting any health concerns that show up.
