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In the early 1980s, Nic Butkov, RPSGT, was working in an exciting, growing Silicon Valley environment, but the corporate posturing left him unsatisfied. Deciding to enter the health care industry, he soon stumbled upon the Stanford University Sleep Disorders Center and found another exciting, growing industry that was much more suitable to his needs - sleep medicine.
"I asked if I could get a tour, and I met the medical director. We got to talking and he asked me what my interests were and if I'd be interested in a job, so I said, 'I'd be willing to work for free if you'll train me,'" said Butkov, 56, director of the School of Clinical Polysomnography in Medford, Ore. "Moving from a Silicon Valley environment to the Stanford Sleep Center was just like night and day. It was a very altruistic field and that was very refreshing."
 During his training at Stanford, Butkov was involved in one of the earliest American clinical trials of continuous positive airway pressure. A technologist who had worked with Colin Sullivan, the Australian developer of CPAP therapy, spent three months at Stanford to provide training because there were no commercially available systems on the market.
"We had the university machine shop build us a blower motor that we modified to use as a CPAP machine," Butkov said. "We also had to mold our own homemade masks, so it was very primitive back in those days. We've come a long way since then."
Born in Italy to Russian emigrants, Butkov came to America in 1955 and grew up in Palo Alto, Calif., but once he passed his registry exam in 1985, he moved to Medford where he still lives with his wife, Wendy, and their 22-year-old daughter, Melissa.
Thankful for the opportunity he received at Stanford to learn from some of the biggest names in sleep medicine, including German Nino-Murcia, MD, and Christian Guilleminault, MD, Butkov has dedicated most of his career to giving back as an educator.
"It was a wonderful opportunity, and part of what I've tried to do is give back," Butkov said. "Once I got into the field, one of the things that struck me was how little information and training there was back then. I was hungry to learn, so I would be asking people to explain why this works this way, and why are we doing this, why are we doing that? And I never really felt quite satisfied with the answers, so I started researching as much as I could on my own, and before I knew it, I was actually teaching others."
Over the last 25 years, Butkov has written the "Atlas of Clinical Polysomnography" and co-founded a variety of sleep programs, including the School of Clinical Polysomnography, as well as Synapse Media Inc., a company dedicated to providing quality training and education in sleep medicine and technology. He also frequently gives talks at various conferences, and even was chosen to assist in the staff training of the first clinical sleep facility in Russia during the mid '90s.
Due to these contributions and more, Butkov won the 2002 Sharon Keenan PhD Award for Excellence in Education and the 2007 Elliot D. Weitzman, MD Service Award for contribution to the growth and development of the sleep technology profession.
"Education is the key," he said. "It's one thing just to get a job and work at that job, and another to understand what you're doing, why you're doing it, how to make it better. I think today it's more important than ever, because the field of sleep medicine has grown so rapidly that there's quite a bit of misinformation floating around. If we're going to do the best job for our patients, we really need to be educated."
Although he is happy about the increased awareness that has been cultivated over the last decade, Butkov is concerned the field may become too commercialized and overrun by the same corporate trends he sought to avoid more than 25 years ago.
"I think we have reached a place where the field is growing by leaps and bounds, but at the same time it's going in all sorts of different directions," he said. "It needs to be more focused, it needs to be more disciplined, and I think we should strive for that. We have to keep focused that our goal really is to do what's best for the patient."
For more information on the School of Clinical Polysomnography or Synapse Media Inc. visit http://www.oregonsleepschool.com/ or www.synapsemedia.com.
Read more stories about respiratory and sleep leaders doing good deeds in their department and community at our Tell Us Your Story page. Do you know a colleague we should interview? Submit your nomination and we'll tell their story!
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