Inland Northwest Spine: A Full Circle Story

From injured patient to practice owner

Courtesy of Inland Northwest Spine

Dr. Doug Blaty and Dr. Bret Dirks met in a Coeur d'Alene exam room, not a hospital hallway or a conference stage. Doug was 17, a running back recruited by the Oregon Ducks, sitting with a fractured spine after a mountain biking accident on Silver Mountain. He had dragged his bike five miles down the mountain before getting help. Dirks, then a neurosurgeon in Coeur d'Alene, delivered the news that Doug's football career was over. Neither of them knew it yet, but that appointment set the course for one of North Idaho's more unusual medical partnerships.

Doug turned his attention to anatomy and injury prevention over contact sports. He kept competing, though, becoming a top 10 decathlon record holder and a Pac-10 All-Academic athlete at the University of Washington. Medicine stayed on his mind the whole time. He just didn't know which direction to take it.

In 2007, Doug reached out to Dirks about the medical mission trips he and his wife Michele ran, providing care in Honduras. Doug joined one. Somewhere between clinics, the two talked about what came next. Doug admitted he wanted a future in medicine but hadn't settled on a specialty. Dirks didn't hesitate. "Why not spine surgery?" That conversation set the direction Doug never wavered from again.

He carried that focus through medical school and into a five-year orthopedic surgery residency, keeping his eye on spine work the entire way. He and Dirks lost touch for nearly eight years while Doug trained. Then, during Doug's fourth year, Dirks called to ask about his plans. Doug explained he had just been accepted into the spine surgery fellowship at Twin Cities Spine Center in Minneapolis. Dirks, who was thinking ahead to his own retirement, asked if Doug wanted to come home and join his practice at Inland Northwest Spine and Neurosurgery instead.

Doug said yes. In 2019, he joined Dirks in Coeur d'Alene, and the two cherished this unique relationship until Dirks retired in 2023 and handed the practice to him. Today, Doug specializes in minimally invasive spine surgery at Inland Northwest Spine, treating the same community that shaped his path into medicine in the first place.

Ask Doug what Dirks means to him and the answer comes without pause. "I can never thank him enough for all of the insight, guidance, and opportunity he provided me. He was there for me in the very beginning when I was down and lost, and still there for me now as I practice medicine as a spine surgeon. He is a friend, colleague, and a flat-out amazing person. This is one of those truly wonderful stories that we don't really talk about, but we both know how special it is. I feel blessed to have come full circle with Bret Dirks in this story."

That circle is the practice itself now. Patients who once saw Dirks see Doug. The surgery table where Doug's own injury ended one career started another, and the same North Idaho community that pulled him through it is who he operates on today.

Inland Northwest Spine

850 W. Ironwood Dr. #300

Coeur d'Alene, ID

208.667.1376

InlandNWSpine.com | Facebook & Instagram @InlandNWSpine

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