Latest / Style Points / 30,000 Feet in the Air with Jesse Pickard-Gabriel
Transcript
- 0:00Hello and welcome to another episode and the start of year two of Style Points.
- 0:15I'm your host, John Crow.
- 0:17Today we'll be joined by Air Force Critical Care anesthesiologist, Jesse Picard-Gabriel.
- 0:22Before that, I'll turn it over to Nate Moore, who will introduce this month's guest for
- 0:26our RSI, which of course stands for Resident Selected Information.
- 0:32Thank you, John.
- 0:33Our RSI today is provided by Dr. A.J. Pagan, one of our CA1 anesthesia residents, and I
- 0:38hope you're hungry for knowledge because he's going to be teaching us about GLP-1 receptor
- 0:42agonists and their perioperative management.
- 0:45Welcome to the show, A.J.
- 0:47What do drugs like semaglutide, dulaglutide, ozempic, and WIGOVI all have in common?
- 0:53If you thought that they're all GLP-1 agonists, that's right, but if you also thought they
- 0:57are a group of drugs that you are not sure how long to instruct your patients to hold
- 1:01them, that's also right.
- 1:02Luckily, this month of December, the American Society of Anesthesiologists released a new
- 1:07multi-society clinical practice guideline statement that we're going to go over today
- 1:11about the recommendations in the perioperative period.
- 1:13First, glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists, the GLP-1s, are a class of medications that
- 1:19were initially introduced for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
- 1:22They were more recently approved by the FDA back in 2021 for weight loss in patients who
- 1:26are overweight or obese by BMI with at least one comorbid condition.
- 1:31Glucagon-like peptide is an endogenous hormone that is produced and secreted by intestinal
- 1:35cells in the brainstem after we eat.
- 1:37It works by enhancing the body's natural release of insulin, but also has functions
- 1:42such as inhibiting the release of glucagon from the pancreas, slowing the rate of food
- 1:46absorption, and of course delaying gastric emptying, the buzzword when we're pre-opping
- 1:50a patient.
- 1:51All of these, in conjunction, reduce your food intake and lead to subsequent weight
- 1:56loss.
- 1:57The clinical implications and side effects of these medications have been a topic of
- 2:01debate when discussing the perioperative management.
- 2:04Common side effects include nausea, vomiting, and delayed gastric emptying, all of which
- 2:08put our patients at increased risk for gastric aspiration when considering your anesthetic
- 2:13plan.
- 2:14The ASA, in combination with the American Gastroenterological Association, American
- 2:18Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, International Society of Perioperative Care
- 2:23for Patients with Obesity, and Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons
- 2:29have developed a consensus statement that was recently released in anesthesiology this
- 2:33December of 2024.
- 2:35The recommendations focus on shared decision-making between the patient, the surgeon or proceduralist,
- 2:40and the anesthesiologist.
- 2:41It is important to note that these are just recommendations derived from consensus opinion
- 2:46and not necessarily from rigorous clinical trial evidence, as these agents are relatively
- 2:51new.
- 2:52The consensus statement itself notes that these should be interpreted as guidance and
- 2:55not evidence-based guidelines, as the statement itself may change as more evidence is gathered.
- 3:01With that disclaimer out of the way, let's talk about the two major recommendations in
- 3:05the guidance.
- 3:06So, the first was to assess the pre-procedural risk for aspiration.
- 3:11This is as you would do for any patient prior to any anesthetic.
- 3:15Recommendations that would increase the risk of aspiration according to the statement include
- 3:19being on the escalation phase of dosing of the GLP-1.
- 3:23This is if you're increasing the dosing weekly or the daily formulation, using a higher dose
- 3:28of a GLP-1, using a long-acting GLP-1 such as the weekly formulations such as Ozempic
- 3:35and Wigovie and Truelicity, or the presence of GI symptoms or delayed gastric emptying
- 3:40in the setting of nausea, vomiting, or abdominal discomfort.
- 3:43Lastly, it mentions conditions beyond GLP-1 usage that can induce delayed gastric emptying
- 3:49such as uncontrolled diabetes, gastroparesis, pancreatitis, IBS, and then types of bariatric
- 3:57surgery.
- 3:58The second recommendation was if none of these risk factors exist in your patient, the GLP-1
- 4:03may be continued perioperatively.
- 4:05If your patient has any of these risk factors, they recommend a liquid diet for at least
- 4:0924 hours pre-procedurally.
- 4:11This is what you would tell your patients prior to like a colonoscopy or bariatric surgery
- 4:15prep.
- 4:16This is to reduce the retained gastric contents inside the stomach.
- 4:20In this scenario, the GLP-1 agent may either be held or continued, and the guidance recommends
- 4:24weighing the medical risks of holding therapy and hyperglycemia against the risk of aspiration
- 4:30when making this decision.
- 4:32If the decision is made to hold the GLP-1, the duration of holding should follow the
- 4:37original ASA statement and guidance.
- 4:39So if your patient is on a daily formulation to hold the day prior, or if they're on a
- 4:44weekly formulation to hold the week prior.
- 4:47To summarize, the perioperative assessment phase before we move into the day of procedure,
- 4:52step one of their statement says to assess your patient for signs and symptoms of delayed
- 4:56gastric emptying and conditions associated with it.
- 5:00If none of these exist, you can continue the medication perioperatively.
- 5:04If mild symptoms exist, they recommend a pure liquid diet for 24 hours similar to a
- 5:09colonoscopy or a bariatric surgery prep, and it may be okay to continue the medication.
- 5:14If severe GI symptoms or in the shared decision-making model, the decision is made to hold the medication,
- 5:20hold daily formulations the day prior to your procedure, or if a weekly formulation, to
- 5:25hold the week prior.
- 5:26Now moving on to the day of surgery.
- 5:29If the GLP-1 was continued, evaluate your patient for signs and symptoms again of delayed
- 5:33gastric emptying.
- 5:35If no symptoms exist, proceed with the procedure as planned as if there were no concern for
- 5:40delayed gastric emptying.
- 5:42When considering induction, RSI versus normal induction would be very provider and practice
- 5:46dependent in this scenario.
- 5:48If there are symptoms or a determination of elevated risk of delayed gastric emptying,
- 5:53you could consider a point-of-care gastric ultrasound.
- 5:56That being said, these can be technically and logistically difficult for these patients
- 5:59to further assess the stomach contents.
- 6:02They also mentioned this is a scenario where you can consider rapid sequence induction.
- 6:06And lastly, to engage the patient into the shared decision-making and to weigh the benefits
- 6:11and risks with proceeding with precautions such as a rapid sequence induction against
- 6:16the risks of procedural cancellation.
- 6:19And lastly, note that these are all the recommendations for anyone taking a GLP-1 regardless of its
- 6:24indication.
- 6:25Now you have the knowledge you need to manage GLP-1 agents effectively and aspire to no
- 6:30aspiration inductions.
- 6:38Jesse Picard-Gabriel is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force and a critical care anesthesiologist
- 6:42that works with me here at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
- 6:45Dr. Picard has been on active duty for the past 20 years, including deployments to Afghanistan,
- 6:51Djibouti and Niger, as well as numerous other operations around the world.
- 6:55In his current role here at UC, he's an instructor for the Critical Care Aeromedical Transport
- 7:00Team course or CCAT and one of the intensivists that works in a variety of critical care settings
- 7:05here at the University of Cincinnati.
- 7:07Jesse, thanks for joining us.
- 7:09Welcome.
- 7:10We should start off.
- 7:12I'm happy to be here.
- 7:13This is the first time I've done this, so forgive me if I'm nervous or if my answers
- 7:17aren't all coherent.
- 7:19You know, you don't really strike me as a nervous guy.
- 7:23That's good.
- 7:24That's good.
- 7:25That means I'm hiding it well.
- 7:26Excellent.
- 7:27And that's something that we all get really good at in anesthesia is hiding how nervous
- 7:32we are in a variety of situations.
- 7:34So obviously you heard a little bit about my intro.
- 7:37I've done a decent amount of traveling.
- 7:39I still get nervous when I take a weekend road trip 150 miles away before I leave the
- 7:47house like I have butterflies in my stomach.
- 7:48What am I forgetting?
- 7:49What's going to happen?
- 7:50What could occur on this trip?
- 7:52What have I not planned for?
- 7:53I've got three little kids with me.
- 7:54Like it doesn't keep me from going anywhere, but I still run through it.
- 8:00It's still in the OR, still in the ICU.
- 8:03Every time I'm about to stick a patient, it's like, how could this central line go wrong?
- 8:08You know, as somebody with three kids myself who experiences similar anxieties, that really
- 8:14hits home for me.
- 8:15I wonder if you could talk about that feeling a little bit more.
- 8:18Wow.
- 8:20This is not a direction I anticipated this interview going right out of the gate.
- 8:25So I guess that's fun.
- 8:26I always like to be challenged and have new experiences.
- 8:29So thank you for that and putting me on my heels.
- 8:33So that's always good too.
- 8:35I think that much of what we do, much of what I've done in the military, much of what we
- 8:40do as physicians requires a tremendous sense of skepticism.
- 8:46And we're always planning for the worst and trying to come up with a plan to avoid it.
- 8:51I think sometimes when working with residents, they aren't scared enough.
- 8:59As they start to go through training, they've done it right a few times, things are going
- 9:02well.
- 9:03And they lose sense of that fear that junior residents have.
- 9:10And they forget how quickly this can turn sideways.
- 9:15And so they don't always have a good backup plan.
- 9:18And then one of my jobs and your job as the senior physician is to make sure that we always
- 9:25have our own backup plan, but also figure out how to educate them to be appropriately
- 9:29scared.
- 9:30So be confident, move forward, but have two or three backup plans.
- 9:35In the military, we call it a pace plan, primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency plan.
- 9:40So what was your backup plan for this podcast?
- 9:43Delay, delay, put it off till tomorrow.
- 9:50But you got me.
- 9:53So this is good.
- 9:55I wouldn't want it to be all scripted.
- 9:57So I don't want to live life in a scripted way.
- 9:59So hopefully, this will be fun for people to listen to.
- 10:02And you and I don't know where this interview is going.
- 10:04So hopefully, it'll be interesting to them too.
- 10:06I'll get you back a little bit on track here.
- 10:08So I'm going to ask you a question that you have already thought about, which is, if you
- 10:13had the opportunity to have dinner with anyone, it could be somebody live or dead from past
- 10:17or from fiction.
- 10:18Who would you have dinner with and why?
- 10:21So I listened to an earlier podcast and Dr. Layman stole my favorite, which is Ben Franklin.
- 10:26I think he's a super interesting dude.
- 10:28Dr. Layman glanced over the fact that the guy had a very interesting social history.
- 10:33Anybody who's interested, look at the time that Ben Franklin spent in France.
- 10:37Lots of fun was had by him and those around him.
- 10:41Another person that I would love to meet would be Teddy Roosevelt.
- 10:46I think he had a very interesting career.
- 10:49The guy got shot and finished his speech, rode up the hill in San Juan, was a fairly
- 10:55successful president, but also made some big mistakes.
- 10:59Left on maybe not ideal terms, tried to come back, didn't know how to let go.
- 11:04There's so many interesting parts of his career that I would just love to chat with him about.
- 11:11If he was willing to actually have a vulnerable conversation.
- 11:18So it's funny, I think about some of these people I'd love to talk to.
- 11:21And honestly, one of the things that comes up in my head is I'd love to have a vulnerable
- 11:25conversation with people about what was really in their head.
- 11:28What was President Obama really thinking when he got the top secret report on the winnability
- 11:35of the war in Afghanistan in the mid teens?
- 11:38I'd love to know what he thought, not what was published and not the answer he would
- 11:43give it a cocktail party.
- 11:44Yeah, not the sanitized version.
- 11:46Right.
- 11:47Like, what was, how did you sleep with that?
- 11:50How did you make the decision to move forward?
- 11:53I went to Afghanistan the first time in 2010 and I went again in 2019 to fight the same
- 11:59war that we've been fighting for nearly 20 years by the time I went the second time.
- 12:06And so I'm curious about why I was there and what I accomplished and what other than the
- 12:13small picture things that I did, I knew I was there to help people, which is one of
- 12:19the privileges of being a military physician.
- 12:21Wherever you go, your job is to heal.
- 12:26But as an American, I'm curious why I was there.
- 12:31That's really interesting.
- 12:33Let's go back to the beginning of what motivated you to do everything here, your whole career
- 12:37pathway.
- 12:38What inspired you to become a military physician?
- 12:42What are some of the choices you made along the way?
- 12:44So I kind of always thought I wanted to be a doctor, always working in that direction
- 12:49from kind of middle school.
- 12:50I thought it was very interesting, human body and the brain.
- 12:52Congratulations.
- 12:53Right.
- 12:54Didn't know I was going to land in anesthesia.
- 12:56No idea about that.
- 12:57But had sort of a crisis of conscience in college.
- 13:02A lot of the pre meds that I was sort of classmates with or met through sort of some of the test
- 13:09prep and things like that were very focused on getting into med school.
- 13:14That was the only thing they cared about to the exclusion of the entire rest of their
- 13:18lives and the world.
- 13:20And I wasn't sure that I had that degree of commitment.
- 13:24And I was almost in some ways uncomfortable with the competitiveness.
- 13:29It seemed kind of cutthroat at times, and I ended up taking a year off, worked as a
- 13:35firefighter, waited tables, like enjoyed my life.
- 13:39And then I realized, OK, you need a real job.
- 13:41Let's go back to med school.
- 13:42Let's do this.
- 13:44And I went to the uniformed services university applied there.
- 13:47And they were they answered a lot of the questions that I had.
- 13:51We were teammates at USU.
- 13:52There was no competition amongst us.
- 13:56If you felt like you had a good understanding of a current topic or a course, you wrote
- 14:03course notes and they got disseminated to the whole class.
- 14:06Everybody was on board with everybody else.
- 14:08We got notes from last year's class.
- 14:11People passed things around among each other.
- 14:13If somebody was struggling, like somebody who was performing well in the class sort
- 14:16of automatically paired up with them to help them.
- 14:19You knew that once you graduated, you might be an ER doc, but that OB-GYN was going to
- 14:26be delivering your wife's baby at, you know, Eglin Air Force Base in five years.
- 14:32Right.
- 14:33Like you, you know, you wanted everyone to pass and learn and do well because we were
- 14:38in this together.
- 14:39That makes sense.
- 14:40I've always been sort of an advocate, maybe subconsciously of the team mentality myself.
- 14:45I remember when I was doing medical school interviews, I went to a medical school, which
- 14:50shall remain unnamed, and they mentioned, oh yeah, you have to watch out because sometimes
- 14:55people will hide the books in the library after they find out that a particular book
- 15:00is, you know, something that the professor is going to recommend.
- 15:04That book will get hidden.
- 15:05So you have to go to the library quickly and get it.
- 15:08And that was an immediate and permanent turnoff for me for the culture of that institution.
- 15:12And I no longer was interested in going there.
- 15:15Absolutely.
- 15:16Absolutely.
- 15:17And I was fortunate.
- 15:18USU answered a lot of those questions and I did okay and I had a good time and it helped
- 15:25me get to where I needed to be in medicine.
- 15:28So how does that intersect with joining a branch of the military?
- 15:32Can you tell me how that all works?
- 15:34So you apply to USU as a medical school first.
- 15:37You have to meet certain, you know, fit to serve standards, which are just, it's a basic
- 15:43physical exam.
- 15:44You can't have any major medical problems because you have to be worldwide deployable
- 15:48when it's over.
- 15:49And USU stands for?
- 15:50Sorry, Uniformed Services University.
- 15:52Excellent.
- 15:53Okay.
- 15:54Very creative name that the government has given to its active duty medical school.
- 15:57So we're about a third army, a third Navy and a third Air Force.
- 16:00About half of us were prior service and half had no prior service.
- 16:04You had to get into the medical school on its own merits and then you could pick which
- 16:07service you wanted to be in.
- 16:09Air Force filled up first and then Army and Navy.
- 16:13But I was fortunate I have a family history of a lot of people that were in the Air Force
- 16:18and so I kind of gravitated to that pretty naturally.
- 16:22That's not normally the way that we use the words family history, but I'll take it in
- 16:27this context.
- 16:28I also have a family history of the Air Force with my dad.
- 16:30Awesome.
- 16:31Awesome.
- 16:32None of my immediate family were in the military.
- 16:34It was all kind of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.
- 16:37What did your dad do for the Air Force?
- 16:39He was a lawyer in the Air Force.
- 16:41So he did sort of the JAG stuff, that kind of thing.
- 16:45Awesome.
- 16:46The docs and the lawyers tend to interact a little bit more often than some of the other
- 16:50folks.
- 16:51Not in a negative way, just as advisors to the commander.
- 16:53So you have line officers that are in charge of sort of directing planes and bombs and
- 16:58soldiers and then you have sort of the people that advise them on the side.
- 17:04Doctors and lawyers are kind of advisors.
- 17:06That makes a lot of sense.
- 17:08Okay.
- 17:09So what was next in your career pathway?
- 17:10So I did a surgical internship at Wright-Patt and then I went and did a five-year general
- 17:15medical officer tour as a flight doc for Air Force Special Operations Command.
- 17:20So I was assigned to a flying squadron, the U, sorry, the U model, the AC-130.
- 17:29So it is the gunship.
- 17:33So any of you guys that play video games where there's a gunship overhead and you can call
- 17:36in air strikes, I was the flight doc for that airplane.
- 17:39So I was responsible for the medical care of everybody in that squadron.
- 17:44So about 400 folks.
- 17:46I was their primary care doctor and I did all of their aeromedical physical exams.
- 17:52And then I deployed with them or with other special operations units to provide basic
- 17:57medical care and trauma medical care.
- 18:00Obviously, I was at a base.
- 18:02If things got complicated, we could always refer them to other sort of medical.
- 18:07But my job was to be embedded in the squadron and to be comfortable with having them come
- 18:13to me.
- 18:16Flyers are on a very strict physical profile.
- 18:19So there's a lot of things they're not allowed to do.
- 18:22There's heavy restrictions on any medications and medical problems can severely impact their
- 18:28career and so they're notorious for hiding all kinds of things.
- 18:32So one of my jobs is to get in close and make sure that I'm someone they can trust so they
- 18:37know that if it's real and if I can see that it's real, that we do need to pause and talk
- 18:42about it and that they don't need to be scared to talk about other things.
- 18:46They can come to you and say, I'm having this problem.
- 18:49Is this a big deal?
- 18:50And you can say, no, you're fine.
- 18:53Don't worry about it.
- 18:54I'll work the paperwork.
- 18:55You can keep flying or this does matter.
- 18:59It's okay.
- 19:00We need to have a pause and we need to address this.
- 19:03That way it's safe for you and it's safe for everybody else and it's safe for your family.
- 19:07So it's kind of like a Gattaca scenario almost.
- 19:11Little bit.
- 19:12Yep.
- 19:13Yep.
- 19:14Little bit.
- 19:15So held to very high standards.
- 19:16Obviously you need to be when you're flying a military aircraft, but you're the guy who
- 19:20is supposed to engender their trust such that they can tell you if they're having that problem.
- 19:26That seems like a big deal.
- 19:28Or you can see it.
- 19:29I flew combat missions downrange with these guys.
- 19:32I flew with them at home.
- 19:34It was a wonderful opportunity to just sort of make friends and hang out.
- 19:39And then if somebody's partner or wife cut their hand cooking dinner on a Saturday, I
- 19:48got a phone call.
- 19:49I went over and threw a few stitches in somebody.
- 19:50They didn't have to go to the ED.
- 19:55Obviously if it was something serious we would go to the ER, but it was concierge medicine
- 20:01if you will for pilots and crews and their families.
- 20:06And then it got a little bit less concierge in Afghanistan and Africa where I lived in
- 20:10a tent.
- 20:11But conceptually it was the same.
- 20:14Before we get to living in a tent in Afghanistan, I wanted to ask you how can you tell if a
- 20:22pilot is a little bit off of their game?
- 20:24Obviously if they crash the plane that you're on, that's probably an indication that they
- 20:28shouldn't fly anymore.
- 20:29But what are some more of the subtle signs that you might be picking up on?
- 20:35So I think that there's a lot.
- 20:40You can look.
- 20:41I was with a heavily deployed squadron that had a lot of combat stress at the time that
- 20:46I was there.
- 20:47And so people would at times make bad decisions in their personal lives.
- 20:53Taking behaviors, things like that.
- 20:57I was surprised how many people just came to me with normal stuff like, hey, I'm thinking
- 21:02about trying to have a kid with my wife.
- 21:05What does that look like?
- 21:07Or like, we tried to have a kid and pregnancy was hard and so this is a stressor.
- 21:12And I'm like, hey, there are people that can help with this.
- 21:18Most of the time they were pretty well balanced.
- 21:21They're very high performing, very healthy folks from a screening perspective already.
- 21:27And I think just being there to connect them with more resources to say, hey, this is heavy.
- 21:39Let's get you an appointment for, here's how you could get some mental health counseling
- 21:44if you wanted it.
- 21:46Sure.
- 21:47That makes sense.
- 21:48I imagine, and I've seen both of the Top Gun movies, the old one and the new one, I assume
- 21:52that those are 100% accurate.
- 21:56I will tell you that it's crazy flying in those jets.
- 22:00It's intense.
- 22:01Tell me more about that.
- 22:02I have had one opportunity to fly in a high performance aircraft.
- 22:05It was a T-38 trainer jet.
- 22:08It is the last jet you fly in before you fly in an F-15 or an F-16.
- 22:13And some countries actually use them as their frontline fighter jets.
- 22:16It was so much fun.
- 22:18We were in the air for an hour and it was exhausting.
- 22:22An hour is almost a full day's work in those aircraft.
- 22:25So you're just pulling Gs and it's summer in Texas.
- 22:30You're sweating to death.
- 22:31You lose three liters of water over a one hour flight.
- 22:35You're dehydrated.
- 22:37I got to fly with two other dock buddies.
- 22:39We each had an instructor in front of us, an instructor behind us, and we were in the
- 22:44seats.
- 22:45And I just chased a buddy around the sky in a fighter jet for an hour.
- 22:50It was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life.
- 22:53How did you make that happen?
- 22:55So I was at a flight surgeon training school and they said, okay, you need some experienced
- 22:59flying jets if you're going to work with pilots and know how to talk to them.
- 23:04That sounds incredible.
- 23:07It was amazing.
- 23:08And then the next week they put me in an aerobatics biplane with a stunt pilot.
- 23:14And we flew like loop deluge and Cuban eights and all these kinds of weird.
- 23:20They literally put a parachute on me.
- 23:22The pilot said, listen, dude, there's one door and I'm a big guy.
- 23:28You've got about three seconds to get out of the plane when I say bail out.
- 23:31Otherwise I am going to knock this seat flat and I'm going out the door.
- 23:35So just to be clear upfront, I was like, what is going on in my life right now?
- 23:42So I can imagine a loop do it.
- 23:45That makes sense to me.
- 23:46What did you say?
- 23:47A Cuban eight?
- 23:50It's like a figure eight in the sky.
- 23:54It's like gravity doesn't matter.
- 23:55The Air Force's big trick is we overcame gravity and I have been the beneficiary of that on
- 24:00a few different occasions.
- 24:02Wow.
- 24:04That does sound truly incredible.
- 24:06Yeah.
- 24:07I mean, I've done so many things in my career and kind of not related to medicine, just
- 24:12being in the Air Force that I didn't know to fantasize about as a child.
- 24:17Like I didn't know that I could fly an aerobatics plane.
- 24:21I didn't know that I could jump out of helicopters.
- 24:23I didn't like there's all these things.
- 24:25I was like, I didn't fantasize about that.
- 24:27It was just amazing.
- 24:29Tell me about jumping out of a helicopter.
- 24:34That was one of the scarier things I've ever done.
- 24:36So I don't, you guys can't see this in the podcast, but I'm only about five foot seven.
- 24:41I am not your classic special forces soldier, right?
- 24:44I'm the doc.
- 24:45My job is to be the doc.
- 24:47They gave me a gun.
- 24:48I kept it locked up.
- 24:49Like I'm the doc.
- 24:52And I got to go through some of the training with some of these guys.
- 24:55And one night we were fast roping out of the back of a helicopter and the rope sits off
- 25:02the tailgate of the helicopter.
- 25:04We were only about 20 feet hovering 20 feet in the air and my arms aren't super long.
- 25:09And they, I couldn't reach the rope with my full hand.
- 25:13I could, I could feel it in the dark against the tips of my fingers and I was not going
- 25:19to wimp out.
- 25:20And so I just leaned forward and jumped and hoped that my hands would get wrapped around
- 25:26the rope.
- 25:27And I, I'm sure it was nothing, but God did it scare me.
- 25:32And I was like, I'd rather break my ankle than look like a wimp.
- 25:36So we're going for it.
- 25:38That sounds like the kind of person that you'd have to be in order to jump out of a helicopter.
- 25:44So it gets back to, I guess, where we started, right?
- 25:46Like I was always scared of all these things, but also just kind of got to press forward,
- 25:52right?
- 25:53Like there's always butterflies and you still got to go.
- 25:56So what was it like when you were in a tent in Afghanistan?
- 26:01So it's funny.
- 26:04I was, I spent more time in tents in Africa.
- 26:08I had like a plywood hut in Afghanistan the first time I went that was highly flammable
- 26:15and had a mouse problem.
- 26:16But other than that, like there was good camaraderie.
- 26:20The bathrooms were kind of far away.
- 26:22So you had to walk outside in the snow in Afghanistan, but you know, you get over that
- 26:27part.
- 26:28It was a, my first trip, I went with special operations.
- 26:30My second trip, I went with CCAT.
- 26:33So the critical care air evacuation teams and two slightly different experiences, but
- 26:41both interesting and just again, got to see amazing things and do interesting stuff.
- 26:48Tell me about some of this interesting stuff.
- 26:50So I guess we can, let's talk about CCAT.
- 26:57So that's the critical care air transport team.
- 26:59I roll here.
- 27:00I can see some of the wheels turning in your head as he's trying in front of me.
- 27:05Jesse is trying very hard to make everything still classified to stay classified.
- 27:12I did a lot of things for air force special operations command that are sensitive topics
- 27:16and probably easier to talk about some of the medical things that I did in Afghanistan.
- 27:22Sure.
- 27:23Let's stay away from divulging classified information on a podcast.
- 27:26It's probably a bad look.
- 27:28So, our team was stationed in Afghanistan in 2019, a three person team, a doc, a nurse
- 27:40and a respiratory therapist.
- 27:43And we were one of the tactical teams.
- 27:45So we had a little bit of extra tactical training so that we could take patients in and out
- 27:51of less secure locations.
- 27:57And we also provided transport from Afghanistan back to Germany, which was our first staging
- 28:04hospital outside of the theater of operations.
- 28:08So I had a few interesting little missions around Afghanistan, often quick, fun stuff.
- 28:14Go sit here and pick this guy up.
- 28:18Took care of a gentleman that was on a team that was hunting for a sniper.
- 28:23They had killed one of our special operations soldiers two nights prior.
- 28:28And so they went back to look for the guy in the same spot and they found him.
- 28:32And he found them first again and shot another one of our soldiers.
- 28:36This was a GSW through the patient, right to left through the abdomen.
- 28:43So interestingly, the round went through his rifle, through his abdomen and lodged in his
- 28:48wrist.
- 28:49Wow.
- 28:50So he got eventually...
- 28:54So we found out that he was shot before he was even taken out of the field.
- 28:58I was able to get to the tent hospital that was going to do his damage control surgery
- 29:05about the same time that he did.
- 29:07He went into the operating room.
- 29:09They stabilized him there.
- 29:11And then we picked him up, packaged him up and flew him back to Bagram for additional
- 29:18surgery.
- 29:19And we eventually flight back to Germany and then back to the United States.
- 29:24That sounds like the most condensed version of what you did that I can possibly imagine.
- 29:30I wonder if you could set the scene for us about what it looks like when you're loading
- 29:37a wounded soldier onto an aircraft and what your specific job is when you're doing all
- 29:42of these really interesting things and sort of how that intersects with what we do in
- 29:46anesthesia.
- 29:47Right.
- 29:48That's fair.
- 29:49So yeah, I brushed through a few details there.
- 29:52So we were staged outside of the main hospital in Bagram and we've got aircraft staged there
- 30:01for us and a full set of equipment.
- 30:03And when we get notified that there is an injury or patient that needs to be transported
- 30:07quickly, it takes us about 30 minutes to grab all of our equipment, throw it in a truck,
- 30:12drive it to the aircraft, load the aircraft, and then get up in the air.
- 30:17From there, it really depends on how far away you are.
- 30:20I think it takes a lot of attention to detail to make sure that you're being organized when
- 30:27you're doing something so quickly and so emergently.
- 30:30You could be dead asleep and you have 30 minutes to be awake, dressed, packaged, and out the
- 30:35door.
- 30:36Checklists became a huge thing.
- 30:38So I always have a checklist hanging in the garage where we kept all of our equipment.
- 30:43We would load it onto the trucks or sometimes other folks would help us load it onto the
- 30:47trucks.
- 30:49But the last thing we always did before we left is my respiratory therapist would stand
- 30:53at the truck and he would eyeball equipment bag by bag and I would read the checklist.
- 31:00And until I got an affirmative on each item, we didn't go.
- 31:03Because once you're in the air, you can't...
- 31:05If I forgot my defibrillator, well, there's no defibrillator.
- 31:08There's no...
- 31:09You're your own thing.
- 31:12And so we were able to load up.
- 31:14We didn't know what we were getting.
- 31:16We knew that the guys were still taking fire when we were first notified.
- 31:21And then when we finally landed, it was dark.
- 31:25Special Operations works at night.
- 31:26It gives us an advantage with our NVGs.
- 31:29Sorry, night vision goggles.
- 31:32The enemy mostly doesn't have those and we have them for almost every one of our soldiers
- 31:39that needs them.
- 31:40And so that gives us a huge advantage.
- 31:43So we fly at night, land at night.
- 31:46We waited on the runway and we were able to watch the medevac helicopter.
- 31:50So the local dust off helicopters are army point of injury evacuation.
- 31:56So they can go into kind of like in Vietnam, you know, the helicopter flies in and picks
- 32:01somebody up while they're still potentially not a secure area.
- 32:07My job with CCAT is more traditionally a somewhat secure scene.
- 32:13And the reason for that is that I'm on a fixed wing aircraft, so it's less maneuverable and
- 32:17it's a bigger target than say a traditional helicopter.
- 32:20So the helicopter would bring them back to the tent surgeon.
- 32:25They're set up to do one or two operations and they did their operations, stabilized
- 32:32the guy, took him about an hour and a half, I think.
- 32:36And I was able to then transfer him to our equipment.
- 32:42So we bring our own ventilators, we bring our own monitors, suction, all of that.
- 32:46I've got all my own drugs.
- 32:48I've got gear and a backpack essentially for any kind of trauma that could come up to stabilize
- 32:54the patient, chest tubes, CRIQ kits.
- 32:59This guy was in a baited, so we put him on our ventilator.
- 33:02We loaded him in the back of a pickup truck and drove him about, I don't know, 15, 20
- 33:09minutes back to the airfield with his buddies.
- 33:13So his buddies helped me transport him back to the aircraft, which I think was important
- 33:16for them.
- 33:17They were able to see him.
- 33:19They had just lost a fellow soldier the night before and then this guy got shot.
- 33:25And so they were able to see him go into the operating room, see him come out stable and
- 33:30then get transported back to Bagram.
- 33:34In flight, pretty uneventful.
- 33:36The surgeon did a good job.
- 33:39The patient, we kept them sedated.
- 33:41It was only about, I want to say a 30 or 45 minute flight, land in Bagram and unload
- 33:47the guy, put him on an ambulance, take him into the main hospital where they have tremendous
- 33:52medical capability.
- 33:54They had a trauma surgeon as well as a dozen other surgeons, so vascular, ENT, OMFS, orthopedic
- 34:03surgery, general surgery, nurses, all of that stuff.
- 34:09The hospital is very robust that we had at that time.
- 34:15So when you're on this critical care transport and there's this guy in front of you that
- 34:21you're keeping alive, what's going through your head?
- 34:24What's your mental model for all this?
- 34:26Don't screw it up.
- 34:30Wow.
- 34:32So there is so much that can go on.
- 34:36So I think the first thing you have to do is think about the injury pattern and what
- 34:41are the risks.
- 34:43So this guy was an abdominal wound.
- 34:45There's a certain set of things you worry about in a patient that's been shot in the
- 34:47abdomen versus a patient that fell and broke a leg or a patient, a person that was in a
- 34:52blast injury and has a TBI or had a heart attack.
- 34:55I flew a patient from Bagram back to Germany emergently that had a heart attack.
- 35:01There's no cath lab in Bagram.
- 35:03So we took him to Germany and went to the cath lab and emergent cabbage.
- 35:08Right?
- 35:09So it's a different, obviously, subset of injuries, complications.
- 35:13So you run through what could go wrong in this patient and then you come up with your
- 35:19top three things that could go wrong and are life threatening.
- 35:23So there's a few things that can go wrong that just doesn't matter that much.
- 35:29If you, I don't know, over sedation, we can give a little bit more pressure.
- 35:36I'm not trying to extubate this guy in flight.
- 35:37If he's a little deep, so be it.
- 35:39I'm going to err on the side of heavy sedation and pain control.
- 35:42Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
- 35:44Versus what happens if we hook the ET tube or the ventilator circuit on a random bag
- 35:52as we're walking down the aisle in this airplane and I extubate the patient.
- 35:56Okay, what's my plan?
- 35:57Where is my gear?
- 35:58What do I need to do to re-innovate this guy?
- 35:59Is he a difficult airway?
- 36:00Does he have trauma in his airway or is this just a normal?
- 36:03No, this was an isolated GSW to the abdomen.
- 36:06We can bag him for half an hour until we get to Bagram.
- 36:08We can put it in an LMA.
- 36:09I keep a crank in my pocket.
- 36:11I have all the ET tubes.
- 36:14I have a video.
- 36:15I have a DL.
- 36:16I have options.
- 36:18It's all those things go through your head.
- 36:22Then looking out for your team is part of it too.
- 36:25I was the most experienced person on the team, the senior physician.
- 36:28I was the only physician, senior medical provider.
- 36:32But also, this was my fourth deployment and my colleagues were newer that were on my team.
- 36:40Several things like making sure that everybody's clipped into the floor and secure for takeoff.
- 36:47Just double checking stuff like that, helping ensure that we're all on the same page and
- 36:52communicating well with the air crew and with each other.
- 36:57What does it look like when you reach your destination?
- 37:01Again, really depends on where you're going.
- 37:05I flew into all kinds of crazy places, never knew what I was getting.
- 37:09Going to pick patients up.
- 37:11They always ask me, so what's the plan?
- 37:14We always had a plan.
- 37:16The only thing that never happened was the plan.
- 37:19Literally guaranteed something else would happen.
- 37:21They tell me that you're going to just land at the airfield and we're going to bring the
- 37:25patient out to you.
- 37:26They should be there.
- 37:27They're going to radio us on final approach and we'll drive them right out.
- 37:30They opened the tailgate on the C-130 and somebody is sitting there in a Ford Taurus
- 37:34waiting to take me to the hospital.
- 37:35I'm like, bro, where do I put the litter in a Ford Taurus?
- 37:40I got 600 pounds of gear, three dudes in armor, a guy, a gal and me.
- 37:45Sorry, not three dudes.
- 37:50Go get a truck.
- 37:52Go get a truck.
- 37:54Go get a truck, man.
- 37:56I'll wait.
- 37:57Yeah, I don't know that the Taurus is necessarily equipped to handle all of your gear.
- 38:03Or the patient.
- 38:04How are we going to get back from the hospital in a Ford Taurus?
- 38:07It was so... anyway, the plan was always something other than the plan.
- 38:14It takes a lot of sense.
- 38:16And then when you get back to Bagram, you come into a big trauma bay and you hand off
- 38:24to very well-equipped teams of ER physicians, nurses.
- 38:31Traumas are overseeing it all.
- 38:32There's more hands.
- 38:33And I was always amazed at how many hands there were at Bagram.
- 38:39When we flew into Ramstein, that was a little different too.
- 38:43In Germany, Ramstein Airfield, where we fly in and out of, is geographically separated
- 38:48from Lahnstuhl Army Base, which has the hospital.
- 38:53So it's about a 20 or 30 minute ride.
- 38:56So you land, unload, get in an ambulance and you have to drive through Germany.
- 39:03The patient I took care of that had the MI.
- 39:06We drove him downtown actually.
- 39:08So we rolled into a civilian hospital and full military fatigues, sweaty and smelly
- 39:15after 18 hours starting the day in Afghanistan and rolled right up into the hospital.
- 39:21My nurse was amazing.
- 39:22She had spent some of her grade school in Germany.
- 39:26Her father was military 40 years prior and she spoke German.
- 39:32Who would have thought that that was going to be such a useful skill?
- 39:36And so we were able to very seamlessly hand the patient over to the German team and they
- 39:41evaluated him and took him to the operating room.
- 39:43Wow.
- 39:44This all sounds like incredible experience.
- 39:47It is.
- 39:48It's funny you asked, what does it look like?
- 39:50And the answer is it looks like whatever you plan and come up with and have three backup
- 39:56plans for.
- 39:58So if you don't come up with a plan and a backup plan, it does not work well.
- 40:04You really do have to continue to communicate, communicate, communicate to try to come up
- 40:07with a way to make it happen for the patient.
- 40:12That's really what matters is making it happen for the patient.
- 40:14So you've had all of this military experience.
- 40:19How does that translate to what you do here at the University of Cincinnati?
- 40:25So obviously one of my roles is teaching that course so that other people can go do that
- 40:30job.
- 40:31So obviously that's a direct translation.
- 40:33That one's pretty easy.
- 40:34I'm surprised how often it helps in sort of civilian medicine too.
- 40:40We transport a patient every time we leave the operating room, right?
- 40:44And sometimes they're critically ill.
- 40:46And when you're packaging up your patient to bring them to the ICU, it's really easy
- 40:53to overlook that.
- 40:55And I think that that can result in complications.
- 40:58I know I've seen some at various hospitals of people failing to sort of adequately prepare
- 41:07and continue to monitor that patient, even if it's only for 10 minutes.
- 41:11That's all it takes to have a bad outcome.
- 41:14And I take that opportunity.
- 41:17One of the things that I always do with the residents is I ask them what could go wrong
- 41:22in the next 10 minutes and what's your plan, right?
- 41:25And that's obviously that got drilled into my head because I had to fly for 10 hours.
- 41:32But you still need to have a plan.
- 41:35You still need to think about those things.
- 41:37It's a shorter list of things that can go wrong in 10 minutes, right?
- 41:42But I still think it's there.
- 41:43And so the fact that it's been so drilled into my head, I just use that opportunity.
- 41:47I expect residents to learn something different from everybody they work with every day.
- 41:51And so maybe that's one of the things they can learn from me if we have a chance to work
- 41:55together.
- 41:56So how old are your kids?
- 41:587, 11, and 13.
- 42:02Whenever you're getting ready to go on a family vacation, do you go through a list of all
- 42:07the things that could go wrong with them and what you expect them to do in those situations?
- 42:16I go through the list of things that could go wrong with the weather.
- 42:20Do you have a coat?
- 42:21Excellent.
- 42:22Other than that, no, I try not to put too much of that on them.
- 42:26I try to take that responsibility.
- 42:29I've noticed, you know, my wife is actually very good at this sort of thing.
- 42:34And she is responsible for the pre-mission checklist.
- 42:38Yeah.
- 42:39Whatever it is.
- 42:41But in my head, I'm also with you.
- 42:44I'm constantly imagining what things could go wrong.
- 42:47You know, what would happen if the car stopped here?
- 42:50What would we do?
- 42:53And I think that that's just sort of one of the ways that our brains operate as anesthesiologists.
- 42:58Right?
- 42:59Like that's the worst case scenario is sort of always on our mind, or at least in the
- 43:03back of our minds so that we can plan for it and do something about it if ever were
- 43:09to happen.
- 43:10Yeah, I do.
- 43:11And I think I definitely as things come up, I do find myself getting into pedantic doctor,
- 43:19dad, attending instructor, whatever role with the kids too.
- 43:25So and then they roll their eyes.
- 43:26But I like to think maybe the words are going into their ears, even if they're, you know,
- 43:32sort of, you know, blowing me off with their eyes that that maybe in the future those words
- 43:36will be there.
- 43:38You know, I didn't really think that as a dad, I was super into safety any more than
- 43:45any other parent.
- 43:46But the first time that I realized what I was doing to my children was when my son came
- 43:52home after having ridden a school bus for the first time.
- 43:55And I said, Hey, how's how's school?
- 43:58Did you like riding the school bus?
- 43:59He said, No, dad, not really.
- 44:01Why?
- 44:02It's like, Dad, the school bus, it doesn't have seat belts.
- 44:07That's funny.
- 44:08Yeah, yeah.
- 44:10It's like, Wow, I have really drilled that into you about the critical importance of
- 44:16it.
- 44:17But I didn't I didn't realize that that I wasn't trying to damage it.
- 44:20I wasn't trying to scar you.
- 44:24It's gonna be okay, buddy.
- 44:25The school bus, you know, cars usually will stop for this.
- 44:29No, same thing in my house.
- 44:30Same thing.
- 44:31Like, if you start driving before the seat belts on, like, some of the kids get anxious.
- 44:35Yeah.
- 44:36Absolutely.
- 44:37Like, I, my son has also commented like, Hey, dad, you need to put your seat belt on, buddy,
- 44:43we're still in the driveway.
- 44:45Yes.
- 44:46You know, your concern has been noted.
- 44:48And you know, you're right.
- 44:50I'm back in the boat down a ramp.
- 44:53Okay.
- 44:54It's okay.
- 44:55It'll be okay.
- 44:56It'll be okay.
- 44:57Okay.
- 44:58So let's talk a little bit more in granular detail about what you do in your teaching
- 45:04roles.
- 45:05You took me on this excellent tour of the simulation center that's here.
- 45:10Tell me all about it.
- 45:12Wow.
- 45:13So we have, I think the preeminent, if I can say that simulation facility in the country,
- 45:23at least as far as the product that we deliver with the students.
- 45:27It's not all of our mannequins aren't the newest.
- 45:30All of our drugs aren't always the freshest, but they're mannequin drugs.
- 45:36So and we do a lot of repairs on a day to day basis.
- 45:40But I think that the medical scenarios that we present are so high fidelity and the way
- 45:46we run our simulations.
- 45:48It's absolutely incredible.
- 45:50We the course is a two week course.
- 45:53So the first week is primarily academics with some introduction to simulation and a big
- 45:58logistics exercise that involves real flight on a C 130.
- 46:03And then the second week is the grading week where they go into one 30 to 60 minute high
- 46:10fidelity simulation with two to three patients as a team every day.
- 46:15So you get graded each day.
- 46:17We rotate the team.
- 46:18So you do five simulations with a variety of partners.
- 46:21You're graded by a strict rubric and then you get feedback and you watch your own videos
- 46:29so that you can try to continue to learn each day and improve.
- 46:33I think that the things that set apart our simulations are very robust patient scenarios.
- 46:42So our patients have they're all almost all of them except for the distractor patients
- 46:47are critically ill.
- 46:49And so they have real A B G's.
- 46:52Many of them are real patients that have been flown by various cadre around the world.
- 46:58So they have a full story and then we make the patient look like the story.
- 47:03We don't give the students information.
- 47:06The students evaluate the patient and learn information.
- 47:10So the instructor doesn't tell you what the blood pressure is.
- 47:14You can zero the A line and plug it into your monitor and then you will get an A line tracing
- 47:18or you can run a cuff pressure and then you will get a blood pressure.
- 47:21If you run one cuff pressure and you don't set it to automatic when the pressure falls
- 47:26in the next three to five minutes you won't notice.
- 47:31And so it is very real.
- 47:34If you want to sedate your patient you don't tell us what you're going to give.
- 47:40You draw a medication.
- 47:41You pull a medication from your bag your backpack whatever your gear set.
- 47:46We have a medication box that's our real world medication box.
- 47:50It's got fake drugs at this point but it's all of the drugs that you would normally carry
- 47:53in the real world.
- 47:55You draw it out in a syringe and you push it in the appropriate dose and you flush it.
- 48:00And until you flush that medication and I watch you flush it from one of a dozen cameras
- 48:06in the room they don't get a response.
- 48:10And when you flush that sedation medication I don't say okay the patient feels more relaxed.
- 48:15I drop the heart rate.
- 48:17I lower the blood pressure a touch.
- 48:18I close the patient's eyes and I make them stop over breathing the vent.
- 48:23And that's how you know that it worked.
- 48:25You may cause hypotension if you choose to give propofol as your sedative of choice in
- 48:29a trauma patient.
- 48:31Obviously that's high risk.
- 48:32You want to give 10 cc's of propofol sorry you want to give 10 milligrams of propofol
- 48:36to a patient.
- 48:37I'm not going to give you any response because I don't think 10 milligrams does anything.
- 48:41On the other hand if you give 70 milligrams of propofol to a patient who is volume down
- 48:48after a damage control surgery I'm going to tank their pressure.
- 48:52I would prefer that you pick something a little more hemodynamically stable like a benzo or
- 48:57ketamine or even fentanyl.
- 48:59Any one of those is going to have a lesser impact on their hemodynamics and so I'm grading
- 49:05that.
- 49:06Not only am I grading your decision making I'm watching to see if you can execute the
- 49:12task correctly.
- 49:13So it's surprising how challenging that can be at times with things that you're not used
- 49:18to doing.
- 49:19So as an example setting up a leave of fed drip if you program the pump wrong and you
- 49:23deliver a hundred times the dose of medication your blood pressure is going to be 300 over
- 49:27200.
- 49:28Right.
- 49:29And so then you're going to have to go back and say why is my blood pressure 300 over
- 49:33200.
- 49:35And so it's all real.
- 49:36It's not.
- 49:38We don't feed information to the patient to the to the teams.
- 49:42They have to provide care to the patient and then they will see what happens and continue
- 49:47to adjust and zero in.
- 49:49So I assume afterwards you're doing a big debrief with them.
- 49:53So yes we debrief all of our simulations we debrief as a group.
- 49:58Unfortunately it's only about 10 minutes and then we debrief as individuals doc to doc
- 50:02nurse to nurse RT to RT respiratory therapist respiratory therapist.
- 50:07And you get more feedback on how to function in the team and how to improve your skills
- 50:15as an individual.
- 50:16But then you do get the chance to watch the simulation with your team.
- 50:20And we consider that to be part of the debrief.
- 50:22If I say something to you after the simulation and then you get a chance to see yourself
- 50:27doing it it really kind of highlights highlights what it was that you were doing.
- 50:33So a common area that we focus on is communication.
- 50:36So people will say something and their partner doesn't hear it.
- 50:40And so we focus on closed loop communication.
- 50:43So it's amazing how often you will you can see this as the instructor and they don't
- 50:47see it as students.
- 50:48The doc doesn't know that the nurse told them something and the nurse is like I said it
- 50:54I said it.
- 50:55And so it's like oh no you said it while the doctor was trying to innovate the patient
- 50:59and there was no closed loop feedback.
- 51:01So you have to make sure that you're telling somebody at a time when they are able to listen
- 51:06and then you want closed loop feedback.
- 51:07And if you don't get the answer you want you need to circle back and like you have to maintain
- 51:11situational awareness and all these things.
- 51:14And on one hand they can sort of grasp it when they go back and they watch the video
- 51:18and they're like oh yeah.
- 51:22Nope.
- 51:23Yep.
- 51:24That's what they're talking about right.
- 51:27That really hammers that home.
- 51:29And then we have additional cadre that are available for further clarification and debrief
- 51:34as they sort of reflect on their simulation throughout the course of the rest of the day
- 51:38or the next day.
- 51:39So I'm sure you've seen a lot of situations where people have done a variety of different
- 51:46performances during their simulation.
- 51:48You've seen people that have done very very well and I'm sure you've seen people who have
- 51:53done very very poorly.
- 51:55As an instructor for some time now what's your approach to talking to the people who
- 52:00have done poorly and then maybe to the people who've done well.
- 52:04So let me start with the easy one is the people that do well.
- 52:11We kind of warn the students you're going to get feedback no matter how well you do.
- 52:14Everybody gets feedback on every simulation no matter what.
- 52:17Nobody's perfect.
- 52:19And so I try to highlight hey you know what were the goals what did you achieve.
- 52:25That's good.
- 52:26You guys did a good job.
- 52:27Here's little things that you can think about or things that could have come up that didn't
- 52:30or things that you did that are you know in a different situation might be more challenging
- 52:36as far as feedback for the ones that are kind of performing at or above goal.
- 52:43For people that are struggling I think that everybody struggles for different reasons
- 52:51and some things we can coach and correct and some things we can't.
- 52:56I think one of the challenges is people that don't have the opportunity to practice medicine
- 53:05on a daily basis with sick patients and it's really hard to come here and then manage even
- 53:11a simulation manage a simulated really sick patient if you don't get a chance to do that
- 53:15on a regular basis.
- 53:17And so we need people that are clinically current in their practice and that's one of
- 53:20the things we ask of people when they show up.
- 53:23We need you to bring your clinical currency if you think that you're sort of out of practice
- 53:28on something we'd like you to seek that out before you get here.
- 53:33One of the big areas that we focus on is communication and team dynamics.
- 53:38We're a three-person team most ICU patients in a fixed facility are not cared for by one
- 53:46doctor one nurse and one respiratory therapist.
- 53:49So we all take on slightly different roles.
- 53:52I do a lot of nursing tasks.
- 53:53My nurse can do a lot of doctor things.
- 53:55They can titrate meds they can titrate pressors and sedation.
- 53:59They don't need permission to give a bolus of an opioid to a critically ill patient if
- 54:04they're under sedated.
- 54:06They're expected to sort of function semi-independently more like you would almost practice as a nurse
- 54:10practitioner in some cases.
- 54:13My RTs are doing a lot of non-respiratory tasks in addition to being responsible for
- 54:19suction, commonly responsible for lots of equipment, assisting with a whole host of
- 54:25tasks.
- 54:26They're sort of like scrub tech light in some ways right or OR nurse light where they will
- 54:33gather supplies for things.
- 54:34They'll find the drugs they'll mix or they'll hang a bag of fluids, crystalloids and basic
- 54:40things like that.
- 54:42And so it's trying to teach people how to work in that environment.
- 54:46Like okay this is what's fair to ask and this is a way for you as a doc to communicate better
- 54:53with your nurse or as a team.
- 54:56And so that's a common area that we kind of focus on.
- 55:01So watch the video and look and see when you asked your nurse to do these five things,
- 55:09look at the nurse and look at their face.
- 55:11I could see their face in the simulation.
- 55:13They got a little bit confused and didn't know where to start because nobody can do
- 55:19five tasks at once.
- 55:21Or you asked them to do three things while they were trying to calculate how to mix a
- 55:26bag of LevaFed.
- 55:27The LevaFed didn't come from the pharmacy.
- 55:29Your nurse literally had to find a vial in the med box, find a bag of crystalloid, draw
- 55:34it up and mix it on their own.
- 55:36So their tasks saturated.
- 55:38Don't ask your nurse for a flush when they're doing math.
- 55:42It's not fair, right?
- 55:44It's just not fair.
- 55:46And so it's little things like that that we can sort of coach and help with.
- 55:50And some of us just practice.
- 55:51So I was just giving people the confidence to just keep going and keep trying and you'll
- 55:56get there.
- 55:58That makes a lot of sense and I appreciate you sharing your experience as an instructor
- 56:02over there too.
- 56:05Sort of summing up, I wonder how you would describe your military experience in terms
- 56:12of is this what you thought you were going to do with your life?
- 56:15Is this something that you're glad that you've done with your life?
- 56:18Can you reflect on that for me?
- 56:21Wow.
- 56:22So you got me at an interesting point in my career.
- 56:25I was just selected for promotion to full colonel.
- 56:29Congratulations.
- 56:30Thank you.
- 56:31It comes with a lot, a lot.
- 56:34There's a lot associated with that and it pushes a career in a different direction.
- 56:39And so I've had a lot of opportunities to sort of reflect on my career lately.
- 56:44And I had no idea about so many of these things.
- 56:50I think by the time I was nearing the end of college, I wasn't even sure I was going
- 56:52to med school anymore.
- 56:55And found the right thing with USU and that went well.
- 56:59And I thought I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon and I did a year of surgery and sort
- 57:05of figured out, no, no, no, no, anesthesia is where I want to be.
- 57:10But when you switch directions, it takes time.
- 57:16And so I ended up doing having this amazing tour with Air Force Special Operations.
- 57:21Like things there that I did, I had no idea.
- 57:27I had no idea how much fun, how interesting, how wild some of these things could be.
- 57:33You know, defensive driving courses, racing cars through the woods at night on NVGs blacked
- 57:39out.
- 57:43Did you know that that's what we do in the forests of Northern Florida?
- 57:46No, me neither.
- 57:48I did not.
- 57:49So I got there, I had no idea.
- 57:52It was wild.
- 57:53It's a ton of fun.
- 57:55I had no idea.
- 57:56And then the opportunity I got to go to the University of Pennsylvania for my residency
- 58:01and my fellowship, like I am convinced that that is a function of the experiences that
- 58:07the Air Force gave me.
- 58:08It was not based on my academic record.
- 58:11My scores, my board scores and this and that were never great.
- 58:17But I learned so much practicing as a GMO flight doc and learning how to work with teams,
- 58:27learning how to work with nurses, learning how to talk to patients.
- 58:33And I guess that came through in the interview.
- 58:35And I got to go one of the top programs in the country.
- 58:38Like I was way out of my league and it was amazing.
- 58:42And they took good care of me and taught me a million things.
- 58:44And I'm super fortunate for that.
- 58:46And then this job here is a dream job in the Air Force.
- 58:49It's an absolute dream job.
- 58:50You get to work at a high volume trauma center and still get to do like some really cool
- 58:58military stuff from the perspective of Seacat.
- 59:01That's really a gem in the Air Force's crown, if you think about it.
- 59:05Like the ability to fly a sick patient anywhere in the world, no matter what, that's what
- 59:11we do.
- 59:12Lastly, I wonder if you could share with us, going back to the title of the podcast, some
- 59:18of your style points that you've picked up along the way.
- 59:23I think that learning about nursing and how to work with nurses is probably the single
- 59:31biggest style point that I absolutely did not have and made heinous mistakes at the
- 59:38beginning of my career and is absolutely one of my greatest strengths and helps me so much
- 59:45now.
- 59:47Throughout my career, I've learned by making numerous mistakes.
- 59:50I don't think most of them came at the expense of patience.
- 59:54I think it came at the expense of peace and collaboration and happiness and kindness.
- 1:00:01Many of those things suffered and that's where I made mistakes.
- 1:00:04And so I wish I hadn't learned all those things the hard way, but having learned them and
- 1:00:11having learned sort of what nurses do and how to work professionally with nurses has
- 1:00:17made me so much better at my job.
- 1:00:20Being at Seacat, where we're on a three-person team, yeah, I'm a doc.
- 1:00:25Yes, they're a nurse.
- 1:00:27Yes, this one's a respiratory therapist, but we're all doctors.
- 1:00:31We're all nurses and we're all respiratory therapists on the plane.
- 1:00:35And learning so much about what they do and how to work better with them has made me a
- 1:00:40much better physician, a much better advocate for my patients, much better at coordinating
- 1:00:46care in the ICU.
- 1:00:50I think that's the style point is learning how to work with the people, the support staff,
- 1:00:56the doctor, and really understand what they do and as a doc, learning how to work with
- 1:01:01nurses is huge.
- 1:01:04It's huge.
- 1:01:06Jesse, thank you so much for your service and thank you so much for joining us today.
- 1:01:12Thank you.
- 1:01:13This was awesome.
- 1:01:14This was a lot of fun.
- 1:01:15Thank you.
- 1:01:17That wraps it up for this month's episode of Style Points.
- 1:01:20This year, I only asked Santa for one thing.
- 1:01:23It was for listeners of this podcast to take just a second and give me a five star review.
- 1:01:29Why you ask?
- 1:01:30Well, it's what helps other people find the podcast.
- 1:01:32The more ratings I get, the more likely it is to show up in someone else's suggestions.
- 1:01:37If you're enjoying it, chances are that somebody else might enjoy it too.
- 1:01:42If you've got an idea for the podcast, feel free to email me at stylepointspodcast.gmail.com.
- 1:01:49I'd love to hear it.
- 1:01:51As always, thanks for listening.
- 1:01:53Take a deep breath.
- 1:01:55Open your eyes.
- 1:01:56We're all done.