Anesthesia touches nearly every area of medicine [PODCAST]

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“I suppose those of us between zero and ninety-three are blessed in our own way as well. We are here, swirling in a jumble of the inconsequential and consequential. We’ve enjoyed some of the world’s beauty and reserve the potential to experience more. Some of us will have longer than others, but perhaps we should focus on savoring rather than quantitating it. Even if it’s only one more year.

That’s life. I have it on good authority that you can’t get through it without a little pain.

In the meantime, let us remember that it’s never too late to chase dreams.”

Hailey Amick is an anesthesiologist who blogs at Facing Monsters.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “Anesthesia touches nearly every area of medicine.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Hailey Amick. She’s an anesthesiologist, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Anesthesia touches nearly every area of medicine.” Hailey, welcome to the show.

Hailey Amick: Thank you for having me. It’s an honor.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into the article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?

Hailey Amick: Sure. Well, my medical journey began in South Carolina. I went to medical school at the University of South Carolina and then did my anesthesia training at Emory University. After that, I went to Knoxville, Tennessee, where I’ve been in a private practice. I have historically been, like most physicians, very career-oriented, very driven. I thought I had a lot of control and agency over my life until I got diagnosed with cancer, and that kind of turned those misconceptions on their head.

So I had to learn to step away from medicine and most parts of my life and learn to be a patient, and I was a terrible patient. Much of being an oncology patient centers around being still and giving yourself time to recuperate and recover, so I had to force myself to do that. One of the things that I could do sitting on my front porch in a rocking chair was write. So I began writing, and I wrote a memoir, but it kind of turned into an introspection on some of the beauties and agonies of life in general.

I think those are things that, as physicians, we get to have this unique opportunity to loiter in the crossroads of life and death and suffering. I don’t think we always spend enough time sitting with those thoughts and those concepts and seeing where those lead us in terms of our own journeys. So I think turning those things into story, putting a narrative around them, is a powerful exercise, and it taught me a lot about myself.

When I resumed practice about a year ago, I really started to try to focus on finding those things in my medical practice and writing them down. I started a blog to do that, to really kind of ask those questions and to continue to seek so that I might find. So that’s what led me to some of the pieces that have been on KevinMD.

Kevin Pho: What are some lessons that you’ve learned through your illness, through being a patient, through writing, that perhaps you could pass on to some of the other clinicians who may be listening to this?

Hailey Amick: Probably my biggest lesson, and I’ll just share an anecdote first. My husband used to get frustrated when I said I practiced medicine. I think that was just a nebulous term to him, and he thought that was something that we should have perfected in all of our training. But it really, I think, speaks to the fact that we’re always trying to perfect ourselves professionally. We’re always looking for an opportunity for improvement, and I think that we should continue to do that.

But I don’t think we do the same thing to ourselves on an individual basis or on a spiritual basis. I think that I have learned to really just try to continue to practice at life and to continue to try to get better and better every day. I think that’s something that has led me to be a better person and consequently better in all my roles in life, be it a physician, be it a parent, being just a human being in general.

Kevin Pho: So as an anesthesiologist, you are on the front lines of the pandemic. How have the last few months affected both you and your practice?

Hailey Amick: It has been certainly a tumultuous experience. It’s been interesting for me because I went from, a couple years ago, having this thing that you can’t see that suddenly is this big threat to your life and completely turning your whole universe sideways, to having it happen again, just differently, with COVID. So it’s been kind of interesting to see it through the lens of the whole world going through that.

Professionally, in the perioperative setting, we’re dealing a lot with those mostly unknown cases, those unknown barriers, and the anxiety that that carries, and really trying to figure out where your responsibility as a physician leader in the perioperative field is, towards not only your patient but the staff that works under you, and keeping them safe. So it’s been interesting to confront some of those lines in the sand that are pretty nebulous.

Kevin Pho: All right, so let’s talk about your KevinMD article, “Anesthesia touches nearly every area of medicine.” Now, for those who haven’t read the article, can you walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?

Hailey Amick: Sure. So it is just a snippet of a day that I had at work, and it really kind of focuses on the breadth of all the different patients that I see. I have the privilege of being involved in everything from heart surgeries to neurosurgeries, to seeing babies born, to seeing people in end-of-life care. To see the whole gamut of it in one day is a lot to absorb. So that article was really me just sort of trying to piece together all those things.

There are some of us that get to live to be in our 90s, and then there are some of us that don’t get past the first few hours of life. Just kind of figuring out where you are on that spectrum, and not really focusing on where you want to be or hope to be, but really enjoying the opportunity to be where you are, and being mindful and in the moment, is kind of what that article centers on.

Kevin Pho: Now, the breadth of patients and the breadth of experiences that you just described, were those reasons why you went into anesthesia in the first place?

Hailey Amick: Yes, I think so. I kind of trickled into anesthesia. I was very interested in internal medicine, I love surgery and doing procedures, and anesthesia wound up being the perfect marriage of those things. I saw, as I got further and further in my training in anesthesia, just the ability to be a part of so many parts of medicine. That was just an unexpected gift that I’ve been grateful for, again, for just stumbling into it, more or less.

Kevin Pho: Is it something that you would choose all over again if you had the opportunity?

Hailey Amick: Yes. I landed right where I’m supposed to be.

Kevin Pho: Now, what do you see as some of the challenges that face the specialties going forward?

Hailey Amick: I think getting through COVID is going to be a special challenge for all of us. I think when it’s over, we’re going to have to really focus on some of the areas of rural medicine that are already quite underserved. I think that problem is going to worsen. I think that moving forward, we all need to really try to realign ourselves in terms of what our goals are in terms of care, how we’re going to fund medicine, and how we’re going to improve on the disparities in medicine that COVID has really done quite a bit to highlight. So I think that we’ve got a lot to do, a lot of work.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Hailey Amick. She’s an anesthesiologist who wrote the KevinMD article “Anesthesia touches nearly every area of medicine.” Hailey, is there something that you know now that you wish you knew back before the pandemic started?

Hailey Amick: Well, I think it’s a lesson that I constantly relearn, and it’s just the tenuous nature of life itself. It’s always a surprise to me each time I re-realize it that life is a precarious thing, and it always has been, and it always will be. So again, it’s something that we need to value and make the most of.

Kevin Pho: So I’m a primary care internal medicine physician, and to be honest, I haven’t really set foot in a hospital for at least the last few months. So are there any lessons from the anesthesia standpoint that you could share with the other specialties, perhaps outpatient specialties, who may not have that breadth of experience that you see every day?

Hailey Amick: I don’t know that I’m, I am touched that you think that I have any wisdom to offer. I think that my greatest piece of wisdom is that we all tend to work so hard to get to where we are, and then we begin to undervalue ourselves. I think we all play a very critical role in the world, and I think that this epidemic has certainly highlighted that. But it’s something that we should all remember every day: We have a privilege, and we have the honor of being in medicine. I think it’s something that we forget at times, but it’s something that needs to be forefront on our minds as we move forward.

Kevin Pho: And my final question: Do you have a take-home message that you want to share with the KevinMD audience?

Hailey Amick: I suppose my take-home message would cycle back to what I was saying before. Again, the value of learning to be a patient was learning to be still, and physicians don’t tend to do that. But I think that if you give yourself any gift, it is the opportunity to sit still and sit with your thoughts sometimes, because I think that there’s a lot that they can teach you that you don’t realize that you know.

Kevin Pho: You mentioned earlier that you had a blog. Can you share how people can find you?

Hailey Amick: Oh, sure. It is at facingmonsters.com, and I blog there about everything from medicine to parenting to just all the things that continue to befuddle me about life.

Kevin Pho: Hailey, thank you so much for sharing your story and insight. Thanks again for being on the show.

Hailey Amick: Thank you for having me.

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