14-05-2025
Mayo grad, remote wilderness doctor, works on new season of 'Survivor'
May 13—MAMANUCA ISLANDS, Fiji — Sarah Spelsberg didn't take a direct route to practicing emergency medicine in remote areas.
It's fitting because she spends much of her time now in places where there isn't a direct route from anywhere. However, being in some of the world's most remote places as part of a team on standby to provide medical aid is where she feels at home.
Spelsberg is the director of USA Field Operations for World Extreme Medicine, a faculty member and podcast host for World Extreme Medicine.
Currently, Spelsberg is in Fiji as part of the medical team on hand for filming of the 49th season of the television show "Survivor." She arrived in Fiji in early April and is a member of a team of doctors and paramedics on the production. One piece of her training for that role was learning how to find the South Pole using the stars in the southern hemisphere.
"There's something really special about practicing medicine in remote places," said Spelsberg, a Rochester native and Mayo High School graduate. "I think places like this play to my strengths."
As for the injuries and ailments she's treating, that has to remain a secret.
"They're typical of what you'd expect under vigorous activity in a tropical environment," she said.
Are there any specifics related to exciting developments viewers will see?
"Very much so," she said. "I think people are going to want to watch this season."
Season 49 will film into the summer and air on CBS in Fall 2025.
Wilderness emergency medicine takes improvisation. It means making do with the tools you have at your disposal and repurposing gear while often navigating tough terrain and extreme weather conditions.
Spelsberg wouldn't have it any other way.
Duct tape and safety pins are two of her favorite and versatile tools.
Spelsberg will be in Fiji until July when she returns to the University of North Carolina Southeastern, where she's a resident in emergency medicine.
Spelsberg's emergency medicine career began in Telluride, Colorado, where she trained with the ambulance crew of the San Miguel County Search and Rescue team. Spelsberg initially went to Colorado to ski and play music. She was hiking when she came across the team in the middle of a rescue and offered to help. She jumped at an opportunity to train with the team for meager pay while a musician residency program in Telluride paid her bills.
Spelsberg then decided to go to physician assistant school. However, after school, she began to miss emergency wilderness medicine. The immediacy of helping people was appealing compared to fighting insurance companies.
She recalled arguing with insurers about whether a recent amputee needed a prosthetic to return to work (they did, she said). Another company denied her request for a lidocaine patch and insisted on prescribing OxyContin for a patient in their 90s.
"It was just over and over hitting roadblocks to get people care," she said. "I don't want to have to ask some businessman's permission to help my patients."
Spelsberg began applying to remote U.S. health care outposts. She got a call from Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
For four years, Spelsberg responded to injured people in need around the Aleutian Islands via helicopters, fixed-wing planes and cargo planes — however she could get to the patient.
Spelsberg said she knew that planes going down in icy conditions was something rescuers risked every time they went up to help someone. Knowing someone needs help would push those thoughts aside, she said.
Even training poses risks. The first time Spelsberg rappelled from a helicopter in flight, she was terrified, she said. However, the training happened over water.
"I figured the worst-case scenario is I take the fall and end up in the water and I'm a good swimmer," she said.
It wasn't training or a rescue mission that got Spelsberg to nearly needing rescue herself. While living in Colorado, Spelsberg decided to take a mountain pass over a mountain to turn a three-hour drive into about an hour. A snowstorm hit and at the summit of the mountain on a narrow road, her car lost forward momentum and started sliding backward.
She thought of her parents, her friends and of her colleagues with San Miguel County SAR.
"I thought, 'Oh my god, I'm going to scar so many people,'" she said. "There was no one around, no cabins, no buildings — nothing."
The car stopped sliding and she was able to maneuver it on the narrow road to make a final run at the incline over the mountain.
These days Spelsberg is less likely to do risky things alone.
"I do things like mountain climbing, scuba diving, those things in groups," she said.
While working in Alaska, Spelsberg decided to attend medical school remotely from Alaska. From 2020 through 2023, she attended online classes that started at 3 a.m. her time.
"I wanted a degree that would let me be able to work anywhere in the world," Spelsberg said, adding more certification would help her better be able to help patients but would also open doors for more opportunities to work around the world.
One opportunity had Spelsberg making house calls to a scientist living on the bottom of the ocean off the Florida coast.
Spelsberg was the lead medical team member on Project NEPTUNE 100. That project's goal, among others, was to study the physiological and psychological effects of prolonged compression on the human body as Dr. Joseph Dituri lived for 100 days in a sea-bottom lodge. As a result, Spelsberg is now also working on certification for use of hyperbaric chambers in medicine. Spelsberg said she doesn't have a specific position in mind in which she'll use her training and certifications, but they're all keys to potential opportunities.
"I do like to make my decisions as opportunities come," she said. "It drives my parents nuts."
Being part of the on-site team for Survivor is a high-profile longshot of wilderness medicine opportunities. Spelsberg was approached to be part of the team. World Extreme Medicine is often approached by production companies making shows or shooting films in remote locations. Spelsberg's leading role in the field and with WEM garnered her the offer she was glad to accept.
"I have earned my stripes so to speak," she said.
She said the medical team and the entire production staff have been great to work with.
"The people who run this, they have this can-do attitude," Spelsberg said. "They're the kind of people I want to surround myself with."
That kind of adaptability likely suits Spelsberg to wilderness emergency medicine.
"In emergency medicine, it's a strength to be absolutely flexible," she said.
It also helps to have a partner who's flexible as well. When not studying or rescuing people from remote environments, Spelsberg currently lives in Jacksonville, Florida, and works at Mayo Clinic there. She still plays music but medicine pays the bills now. Her partner, Alton Robey mostly patiently waits for her while she's in remote settings or studying. It's not all bad, she said. He plans to join her in Fiji next week to surf and fish there.
