In his dual role as a medical journalist for CNN and a practicing neurosurgeon, Dr. Sanjay Gupta has had to wear both hats while in the field.

As the keynote speaker at the inaugural Akron Children’s Hospital Child Advocacy Summit held at the Akron/Fairlawn Hilton on Tuesday, Gupta, who has been with CNN since 2001, shared several stories of how he has bridged both roles.

In 2010, Gupta and his television crew were among the first to arrive in Haiti within 19 hours after a massive earthquake — even before the military.

“It wasn’t like anything anybody had seen,” Gupta said. Estimates were that 100,000 people died within minutes of the earthquake and tens of thousands died in the days and weeks to follow, he said.

“We saw large dump trucks and kids are running after the dump trucks. We thought 'Why are these kids running after these dump trucks?’ then all of the sudden, it clicked. There were so many bodies so quick that the only thing they could do was gather these bodies and take them to mass burial sites. The kids were running after the dump trucks to find out if their parents were in them,” he said.

Gupta had already been on the air reporting on the natural disaster when his crew received a satellite phone call from CNN's international desk in Atlanta. The U.S. Navy’s USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier was coming in off the coast of Haiti with a 12-year-old patient who needed a neurosurgeon.

Military officials knew Gupta was in Haiti from his TV reports. He was the only neurosurgeon in the area.

“Whether you’re a doctor or not, you try to provide resources,” Gupta said.

Gupta met a medical helicopter, which took him to the ship to operate on the little girl with a piece of shrapnel in her head. There were no high-tech machines, just a simple X-ray machine to show him the skull and a piece of shrapnel. He couldn’t even tell if it was on the left or right of her head.

The girl did well through the surgery, Gupta said, but it was afterward that he and others found out that while the girl would recover from the medical procedure, her mother died in the earthquake, it was likely her dad was going to be a paraplegic from his injuries and her neighborhood was gone.

Gupta said as a journalist, he believes it’s important to tell about hope and honesty, but also in telling stories, you have to tell the whole story.

“We have to make sure we always paint the complete picture of what’s happening because things don’t often get neatly tied up in a neat bow,” he said. “We have a duty to our viewers to make sure even if it’s not the ending that we hope for, that we always tell that story.”

In another case where Gupta was called to serve as a doctor while working as a journalist, he was embedded in 2003 in Iraq and Kuwait with the U.S. Navy’s “Devil Docs” medical unit, which is a front-line team for injuries.

A 23-year-old Marine named Jesus Vidaña was shot in the head by a sniper. There were no neurosurgeons on the team, except Gupta.

The tent in the middle of the dusty desert didn’t have the proper equipment for Gupta.

“I took the drill used to put up the tent — a Black and Decker drill — sterilized the bit and used it to perform a craniotomy to give him space in his brain,” said Gupta.

There also was not equipment to close up the wounds.

“I took an IV bag and filleted it open and used that to recreate the outside of his brain, wrapped him up and put him on a helicopter,” Gupta said.

The Marine survived and Gupta later visited him and his family in California.

During a question-and-answer session, Gupta was asked how he navigates going from serving as a journalist to serving as a doctor in emergency situations.

Gupta acknowledged that he has had concern from the journalism community of being too close to the situation. “I think it’s different when it comes to medicine as opposed to other things,” he said. “I think anyone would help if they could regardless of whether they’re a physician. If you’re the first on the ground, your obligation is to help.”

Beacon Journal consumer columnist and medical reporter Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her @blinfisherABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/BettyLinFisherABJ and see all her stories at www.ohio.com/topics/linfisher