Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes
“As I read about Dr. Breen, saddened by the fact that we have been robbed of yet another young, promising, motivated physician, I am reminded that as bad as this pandemic is — and truly believe it is awful — when it gets better (and I have to believe that it will), we can’t forget. Because all the other things that have always been there but got shoved to the back burner by COVID will be there again. And no matter what kind of medicine you practice, there will be unique (and some not-so-unique) stressors.
We are always expected to be kind to our patients. But my plea to you is to be kind to each other and, more importantly, yourself. You’re worth it. And I promise there is someone out there who understands what you are going through.
Sometimes you just have to ask.”
Annalise Sorrentino is a board-certified pediatrician and pediatric emergency medicine physician. She can be reached at her website, on LinkedIn, and on Twitter @BlazerMD.
She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “A message for health care workers: Be kind to yourself.”
This episode is sponsored by The Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX). The Nuance DAX solution makes it possible to forget the tech-toggling and reduces documentation burdens no matter how or where care is being provided.
Did you enjoy today’s episode?
Please click here to leave a review for The Podcast by KevinMD. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get notified when a new episode comes out!
Do you know someone who might enjoy this episode? Share this episode to anyone who wants to hear health care stories filled with information, insight, and inspiration.
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 Annalise Sorrentino. She is a board-certified pediatric emergency physician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “A message for health care workers: Be kind to yourself.” Annalise, welcome to the show.
Annalise Sorrentino: Kevin, thank you so much for having me.
Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?
Annalise Sorrentino: Yeah, so I’m currently in Birmingham, Alabama, but I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in Kansas City and went to medical school there, and I came here to train and have never left. Alabama has been a wonderful place to live and to train, and I miss the Midwest this time of year because I miss the fall. Birmingham and Alabama have been wonderful.
I have been a pediatric emergency medicine physician for several years now. It seems that the longer I get out of fellowship, the more I can’t believe it’s been quite so long, but I love it. I love what I do. I love being able to take care of sick and injured kids. And I love to teach, and I love to write. So I appreciate people like you who have given us physicians an outlet and another way to bring our feelings and our thoughts to the forefront and share them with other physicians.
Real physician voices, twice a week
Free, and one click to unsubscribe.
Kevin Pho: So we are now speaking in the third week of September. How’s the pandemic affecting the pediatric emergency room?
Annalise Sorrentino: So when it hit, earlier, our numbers really plummeted, and I think that for the most part, people were staying at home. Our summer numbers are usually lower anyway, but we were seeing maybe half of what we would normally see. Well, that has started to rebound back up a little bit, and schools are in session here in Alabama. Many of them are in-person schools. And so we’ve seen a little bit of a bump. We’re probably not quite back to our summer numbers; we’re probably seeing maybe 150 a day, and it used to be that a busy day was 250, and we would hit 250 and 300 sometimes during flu season. So we’re still down, but our acuity was much higher. Our admission rates were much higher. So I do think the people that needed to come came.
I do think there was a little bit of what the adult side experienced, where people put off coming to the emergency department because of COVID and because of the pandemic, and so they would come with misdiagnoses or delayed diagnoses. And we saw a little bit of that with kids, but not quite as much. So I think it’s coming. We’re working our way back up to our regular numbers, but still not to where we would be normally at this time of year.
Kevin Pho: Now, for the children who test positive for COVID, how are they presenting to the emergency room?
Annalise Sorrentino: Well, it’s an interesting question. So when we first started testing, and we don’t do any outpatient testing in the emergency department, anyone who gets admitted to the hospital gets tested. So when the pandemic first started earlier, in late spring, early summer, the patients that were positive were usually the patients that were admitted for an unrelated reason, an appendectomy or a trauma patient. The majority, 70 percent of our positives, were patients that were asymptomatic.
So with the kids, we know their COVID status if they get admitted or if they’ve had testing done someplace else. But if they have fever, if they have the runny nose, if they have the cough, again, with kids, that’s pretty much their fall and winter if they’re in school or in daycare. So it’s a little bit challenging. Like I said, it’s been interesting to see the ones that have been positive once they’ve been admitted, because, again, I still think that we have a good number of kids who are asymptomatic that are still testing positive.
Kevin Pho: So let’s talk about your KevinMD article, “A message for health care workers: Be kind to yourself.” Now, for those who haven’t read your article, can you walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?
Annalise Sorrentino: This was something that I had written about previously, because I had a friend from medical school, a physician friend, who committed suicide. And when the pandemic broke and the stories in the New York Times came out about Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency physician who also committed suicide, it brought back, or renewed, some of the feelings. I think that we physicians, in general, are really bad at taking care of ourselves. And to think about Dr. Breen, or any other physician who has been at that point in their career or in their day or in their life or wherever, where they felt that was the only solution, is heartbreaking. And I know it’s much more common than any of us want to think about, and it has probably touched all of us, either personally or very, very closely.
And so I think that, for me, I just want to make sure that everyone else knows, or that potentially people know, that they’re not alone, that probably, no matter how you’re feeling, someone else has felt that way or is feeling that way. There has always been a stigma, I feel, attached to physicians having emotions and being able to express them. But if we don’t, then things are only going to get worse.
I think that, especially working in the emergency department, we do a bad job of debriefing. We have a horrible case or something happens, and we immediately have to brush it off and go see the next patient, because there’s always a waiting room full of patients. And I think that, again, not just emergency medicine physicians, but physicians in general are the worst at taking care of themselves. And I think that my biggest goal is to help people realize that they’re not alone and that other people have felt that way, even though we as physicians are very bad at letting other people know that.
Kevin Pho: So take us into the emergency room and tell us about some of the stresses and how those stresses affect the physicians practicing there.
Annalise Sorrentino: Sure. So I think that there are, and again, I only do pediatrics, I don’t take care of adults, so I think there are much different stressors depending on where you work. A lot of people ask me, “I don’t know how you can take care of kids. How can you do it?” And my answer is, kids are so resilient. They bounce back. They’re otherwise healthy. They don’t have comorbidities. Even seemingly minor interventions really make them better. And so luckily, the sad cases or the bad traumas or the arrests are few and far between. Because of that, I think that we are even more susceptible to not dealing with it.
It’s obvious when we have a bad car accident. I think the traumatic ones are difficult. I think the medical resuscitations are hard, and anytime a child dies or has a bad injury or a bad outcome, it affects everyone involved, no matter how many years you’ve been doing this. And I think that, when I talk to my residents and my fellows, it’s OK to show some emotion, and it’s OK to take a few minutes, because I think that once I get to the point where I don’t need that, and I don’t feel like I’m affected by these potentially life-changing events that happen to families, then it’s time for me to get out.
So I think that the stress on all physicians, not just emergency medicine physicians but on all physicians, is that we’re under the microscope so often. A lot of moves that we make and a lot of decisions that we make are being scrutinized. The stressors of being in an emergency department are also one of the things that we love about being there: not knowing what’s coming through the door next, the pace, the unexpected.
And so, while I do love that part of my job, and think that’s exactly why I stay in this field, I think that we need to be better, and I need to be better, at teaching the residents and teaching our fellows self-care, whatever that looks like to them, whether it’s going for a run or writing about it or taking 5 minutes and just having a good cry, whatever that is. We were not taught to do that. But I think it’s our responsibility to teach the next generation of physicians how to do that.
Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Annalise Sorrentino. She is a pediatric emergency physician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “A message for health care workers: Be kind to yourself.” Annalise, for those physicians who are feeling burned out, what kind of resources do you suggest that they turn to?
Annalise Sorrentino: There are so many options, I think, that are out there. There are, and I have sought out options. I think that one is looking at your own facility or your university. Again, I work for the university, and there are lots of good employee assistance resources that could be used. I think it’s a very personal thing. I think that the first part is recognizing it. There are all kinds of burnout tests and all kinds of things that you can do, and I know that people are pushing, “Watch out. Make sure that you’re not burned out. Make sure that you’re recognizing all the signs.” But whatever it is that you decide to do, it’s making sure that you realize that it’s OK to do. I think that’s probably the most important step, taking that first step.
I am a big proponent of therapy, having someone to talk to, and whether that person is a professional therapist, whether that person is a psychiatrist, whether that person is your sister, your brother, or your neighbor, whoever it is, I think it’s so important to just have someone to talk to. When I tell people, if you want someone formal, then yes, go through the university or go through your facility. Hopefully, the children’s hospital also has a great system of being able to make an appointment just to talk to someone, and at least know: Is that something that would work for you moving forward? Is this something that you would want to explore a little bit more? But I think the first step is just getting out there to do it. And like I said, it doesn’t have to be a professional. It can be your neighbor, your best friend, whoever it is. But just find someone that you can talk to and that will listen.
Kevin Pho: And my final question, Annalise, do you have a take-home message that you want to share with the KevinMD audience?
Annalise Sorrentino: My biggest message, and again, one of the things that I tell my residents and my fellows and my colleagues, is that no matter what you’re feeling at any particular time, I promise you, you’re not alone. Someone else has felt that way, and there are ways to help deal with that. And so I think sometimes for me, before I realized that I wasn’t alone in my feelings and that I wasn’t wrong to feel the way that I felt, if I was feeling depressed or overworked or underappreciated or whatever it was. I think that whatever you’re feeling, someone else has felt it.
And I think just having that knowledge that you’re not alone really helps. It kind of helps bring you out of it, at least to the point where you can then deal with it. Because I think that having that feeling of, “I’m alone. No one else feels this way. I shouldn’t feel this way,” that’s where we tend to get ourselves into trouble and go deeper.
Kevin Pho: Annalise, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.
Annalise Sorrentino: Kevin, I appreciate it. Thank you so much, and thank you for what you do.
Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes
