Transformational Times
Words of Hope, Character & Resilience from our Virtual Community
Friday, December 11, 2020
In this Focus on Caring Issue:

Director's Corner
  • Adina Kalet, MD, MPH: We Have Both a Duty to Care and a Responsibility to Care: What Does that Look Like?

Perspectives/Opinions
  • Wendy Peltier, MD: What Better Time to Focus on Caring?
  • Alicia Pilarski, DO, and Cassie Ferguson, MD: Loving Each Other Through the Darkness
  • Himanshu Agrawal, MD: My Tryst with Shame and Stigma
  • David Cipriano, PhD: MCW Suicide Prevention Council: Addressing Culture Through Risk Protective Factors
  • Kristin Kroll, PhD: The BRaVe Clinic: Evidence-Based and Virtual Mental Health Care

Poetry Corner
  • Connor Pedersen: Origin

Your Turn
  • See how readers answered last week's prompt: If you could travel anywhere in the world on a humanitarian mission, where would you go and why?
  • Respond to this week's prompt: How do you show your patients, your students, your colleagues, or your loved ones that you care?
  • Respond to this week's character question: How do you show compassion?

Announcements & Resources
  • Register for Kern's Upcoming Virtual Events
  • Apply to the Kern Institute's Faculty Scholars Program
  • Respond to Kern's Request for Student Representatives
  • Respond to Kern's RFP to build Transformation Collaboratories
  • Learn How You Can Be Involved in the 2020 MCW Common Read
  • Kern National Network Connections Newsletter - December 2020
Director's Corner
We Have Both a Duty to Care and a Responsibility to Care: What Does that Look Like?

by Adina Kalet, MD, MPH

This week, Dr. Kalet considers how today’s physicians, facing unacceptable fragmentation of care, need to recommit to an Ethics of Care for, with, and about the individual patient. 
Our Triple Aim is Character, Caring, and Competence.

A good friend of mine is suffering. She recently underwent what is typically a relatively straightforward surgical procedure both she and her physician expected would correct a disabling problem and improve her quality of life. Instead, she developed a rare, perplexing, painful complication that significantly limits her mobility, interferes with getting a good night’s sleep, and has not responded well to treatments. And she essentially has been abandoned by the surgeon who performed the procedure.
Perspective/Opinion
What Better Time to Focus on Caring?

by Wendy Peltier, MD - Member of the KNN Work Group on Caring

Dr. Peltier, who has a special interest in how caring can be integrated into medical education and practice, describes how it is understood in both theoretical and personal, practical terms …

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."
-Aristotle
 
When the call came for faculty volunteers for the Kern Institute, I was quick to raise my hand. I can still remember how refreshing it was to hear of Kern’s distinct focus on caring in medical education and faculty development. It was great for me, since my career transition from neurology to palliative care had brought may opportunities to reflect on my own practices around caring with a holistic bent. 
Perspective/Opinion
Loving Each Other Through the Darkness

by Alicia Pilarski, DO, and Cassie Ferguson, MD


“My patient was talking with me a few minutes ago and then he just coded…we tried everything we could. Breaking the news to his family over the phone was awful.”

“I just can’t unsee what happened to my patient. She was so badly abused and injured and I can’t imagine what she went through…”

“I made a mistake. I thought our patient was suffering from congestive heart failure, but it was sepsis. I never gave antibiotics and caused further damage from giving diuretics. I’m not sure how I can go back to work tomorrow.”

As physicians and learners, we see people suffer with protracted and difficult illnesses. We see lives instantly devastated by a new diagnosis or injury. We are asked to bear witness to the death of patients too sick to be surrounded by their own family. And then we kneel alone, face in our hands, before rising quickly to take care of the next patient. We are not taught or given the space to process these tragedies aloud.
Perspective/Opinion
My Tryst with Shame and Stigma

by Himanshu Agrawal, MD - Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health

Dr. Agrawal shares his journey with mental health and the need to fight the stigma attached to mental health diagnoses …

In 2002, when I wrote my personal statement, I explained why I wanted to be a psychiatrist: how I was fascinated with neurotransmitters, the signs and symptoms of a brain gone awry. Eighteen years later, I realize that even though this fascination still holds true, I really became a psychiatrist because of events that occurred in my formative years. I became a child psychiatrist, in part, to ensure that no other child with ADHD went through life the way I did. (Thankfully, this is not the reason I remain in love with Psychiatry. I have come to believe that if you’re no more than a wounded warrior, you risk being a burnt-out martyr).  
Perspective/Opinion
MCW Suicide Prevention Council: Addressing Culture Through Risk and Protective Factors

by David Cipriano, PhD - Director of Student and Resident Behavioral Health

Dr. Cipriano, co-chair of MCW’s new Suicide Prevention Council, shares the Council’s journey, findings, and hopes for the future …


In February, 2020, the Office of the Provost chartered the MCW Suicide Prevention & Well-Being Support Steering Committee (we call ourselves the Suicide Prevention Council). I co-chair the Council with Darcey Ipock, Associate Vice President and Chief of Staff for the School of Medicine. The Committee is staffed by representatives from all schools and campuses of MCW (including students), as well as various departments such as Academic Affairs, Public Safety, Office of Communications, General Counsel, Human Resources, Faculty Affairs, and Corporate Compliance. Our membership represents far-flung disciplines with very few from the mental health profession. In fact, we deliberately set it up this way believing that neither the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine nor Student and Resident Behavioral Health should “own” suicide prevention. We all have a stake in this, and we would like for everyone in our MCW community to feel like a part of the solution.
Perspective/Opinion
The BRaVe Clinic: Evidence-Based and Virtual Mental Health Care

by Kirstin Kroll, PhD - Psychologist, Children's Wisconsin Herma Heart Institute

Dr. Kroll highlights the need for mental health services for health care workers, and how the BRaVe clinic helps individuals build resilience and create effective distress management strategies ...

Frontline healthcare workers face inordinately high levels of trauma, particularly those offering direct care for patients with active or suspected COVID-19 infections. As was documented during the SARS and Ebola outbreaks, these workers can themselves become infected and remain at risk for behavioral health distress. This has been compounded by changing policies, shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), and the potential for inadvertently infecting loved ones and others. The psychological distress, which is expected to continue for a long time, has a significant impact on cognitive function, which leads to reduced efficiency and potential for medical errors.
"In the minutes it took to put our PPE on, we had watched our patients die. In a quiet side reaction, we felt the good things leave our body, and grief come to stay.

We leaned forward and bowed our heads in order to redirect the flow of tears. We couldn’t risk touching our faces and we need them to fall onto our scrubs. We couldn’t ruin our masks."


by Rana Awdish, MD
Author of In Shock; Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program, Medical Director of Care Experience, Henry Ford Hospital


The Shape of the Shore
Intima | Fall 2020
This week’s poem is a stunning reflection on the meaning of life titled “Origin.” It is written by MCW Student Connor Pedersen. Connor is an M1 from Minnesota with an interest in exploring the world of medicine through the lens of creative writing.


Origin
by Connor Pedersen


How is the soul formed?
We come into this world carrying nothing,
Laying curled inside our mothers.
Is it grown like the rest of our bodies,
Taking shape alongside our half-closed eyes?
Does it arrive in the echo of our first heartbeat,
Or do we inhale it with our first, panicked breath?
Does it blow in from the window, half-seen, like the shadows of leaves?
Is it conjured forth in the passing of dreams,
when days are more than warm darkness,
And light marks the mornings?

How will the soul return?
When the bell is rung and the blood runs still,
What form will it take?
For those I love, how should I prepare?
If it drips from the skin and soaks the sheets, like meltwater in the spring,
I will wring out the dressings and guide the rivers to the earth,
Returning what was borrowed, the rented and the riven.
If it rises to the ceiling as steam, as breath,
I will open the windows and cover the mirrors.
If it emerges as light from the eyes, the mouth, the skin,
The specter of a sun, I will be its witness,
As the shadow of sleep reaps its radiance.

Will I be so lucky, when the time comes,
To lay curled in my bed, and leave the world
Just as empty as I entered it?

I would go to India. I was born in the poor areas there and I want to give back to where I came from.

– Simmi Bharwani, Masters of Science in Anesthesia Student
I would go to Syria. A decade after the hopes of Arab Spring, Syria remains embattled in a ruthless civil war that’s included torture, air strikes, and chemical attacks on its citizens. Instead of receiving support from the international community, major foreign powers have turned Syria into a proxy battleground instead.

I’ll leave the details and nuances for those who have written and spoken extensively on Syria, but the facts are this: 14 out of 21 million Syrians have been displaced since the conflict broke out. Half internally and half seeking refuge, resulting in the largest refugee crisis since WW2. With many countries balking at accepting refugees, Syria is a country that has been abandoned by the greater world, unwilling to aid Syria within its borders without an agenda and unwilling to aid Syrians outside of Syria as they risk their lives for safety and peace. Syria and refugee camps are crying out for relief, for help and they deserve help.

– Tracy Bui, Medical Student

That's easy, I would go to Kenya. Specifically, Nairobi. Both at the hospital where I trained and the large slums close by where many of the patients live.

– Njeri Wainaina, MD
Given that Doctors Without Borders was recently on an international humanitarian mission in the U.S., I would similarly travel to assist the homeless in New York, migrant farmworkers in Florida, the Navajo Nation, and our fellow citizens in mainland Puerto Rico.

– Javier M., Medical Student

Respond to next week's reflection prompt:


How do you show your patients, your students, your colleagues, or your loved ones that you care?
Kern Grand Rounds Presentation
Women and COVID-19: 
Challenges, Opportunities, 
Thoughts for the Future

Please be sure to join us for Grand Rounds with Elizabeth Ellinas, MD,
Director of the MCW Center for the Advancement of Women in Science and Medicine (AWSM), Associate Dean for Women's Leadership, and Professor of Anesthesiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

The COVID-19 crisis has found women in the forefront of the battle against the pandemic both at work and at home. Please be sure to join as we consider the effects of COVID on women and their careers and share challenges by gender.
January 21, 2020
Live Virtual Presentation
9:00 - 10:00 am CT
Apply to the Kern Institute Faculty Scholars Program


The Kern Institute announces two opportunities for faculty development through our Kern Scholars Program: 

Master of Health Professions Education
We are looking for faculty interested in pursuing a Master of Health Professions Education through the New York University Langone’s Department of Medicine. 

Master of Arts in Character Education
The Kern Family Foundation is graciously inviting any interested faculty member to apply for the Master of Arts in Character Education at the Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. 
Students: Are You Interested in Being Involved in the Kern Institute?


We are seeking student representatives with an interest in medical education to help guide our Kern Institute programs and initiatives at MCW. We are very interested in student voices and perspectives to help us with our work!

Your time commitment would be participation in monthly or bi-monthly meetings, with opportunities to participate on special projects. Please select the area (below) you are most interested in to send a message to that leader.
Kern Institute Announces Request for Proposals
LOI Due December 23, 2020

The Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education at the Medical College of Wisconsin is pleased to release this request for proposals to build Medical Education Transformation Collaboratories, cross-institutional, multi- and inter-disciplinary, multiple stakeholder communities of practice that work together in a sustained effort around a shared project to transform medical education by engaging in both innovation and scholarship.
 
We seek submission from teams of 3 to 5 individuals who will devote compensated time to build a community of practice around medical education transformation. These collaboratories will serve as incubators for the creation of generalizable knowledge as we move rapidly into a new era of medical education. Eligible groups must include at least one member employed at an LCME-accredited medical school, with other members currently affiliated with institutions or organizations with a stake in health and healthcare. Please click the link to view the RFP.
Participate in the MCW Common Read!

We are extremely moved by the overwhelming interest shown in this year’s Common Read program, featuring How to Be an Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. It is a true testament to your devotion to racial equity and determination to make the MCW community a safer and more inclusive place for all.

We understand that many of you are eager to get involved, so we have outlined some ways that you can participate via the link below.
The Kern National Network
Click anywhere on the image for the KNN's current newsletter
MCW COVID-19 Resource Center
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