Transcriber: Sugandika Subawickrama Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
“Change is inevitable, progress is not,” said Max McKeown.
What hasn’t changed during the pandemic?
From a reliance on virtual interactions
to the price of milk to healthcare information consumption,
it seems that nothing’s the same as it was before 2020.
People who didn’t know public health was even a discipline
are now discussing vaccine effectiveness and virus transmissibility,
oftentimes by sharing a Facebook post or retweeting a comment
without regard to whether it was founded in science or science fiction.
As we all watched the novel coronavirus become a global pandemic
from our virtual front row seats,
theories and potential explanations
about everything from virus origin to new therapies
came across our screens rapid fire, and they continue to flow.
In the beginning, we all tuned in diligently every day
to hear the latest developments
and bear witness to large scale loss and personal devastation.
This always-on news coverage
shifted from focusing exclusively on the health of the individual
to the health of society, the collective.
As stay-at-home protective measures rolled out,
it became clear people were confused, frightened,
and unable to distill the onslaught of content into something understandable.
Consequently, the pandemic forced healthcare education to evolve
beyond personal and private conversations with our primary doctors
to a ceaseless mass stream of information that we are responsible for interpreting,
evaluating, and navigating, all without a road map or a compass.
In the spirit of safety and protection,
the world locked down, and accessibility to trusted medical expertise
became both crucial but oftentimes scarce.
Within the pediatric sphere,
the uncertainty and fear of the situation was exponentially acute,
with the emotional toll inflicted on our most precious and vulnerable population.
COVID-19 messaging as it related to children
was even less clear than that for adults,
and the vaccines for children were even slower to arrive.
Early on, it was difficult for parents to find a venue
to simply get their kids a test.
Parents were desperate for clear and reliable information
to protect their families.
As the misinterpretations of rapidly evolving data piled up,
I became the chair of my organization's COVID response team,
which was charged with staying up to date on emerging information and protocols,
ferreting out the good science from the bad
and creating clinical guidelines for our offices across the country.
Back in the spring of 2020,
we met twice daily for several hours at a time,
as the morning clinical protocol often necessitated a change by the evening.
The processes of screening, testing, and treatment
were constantly being updated,
so the clinical leaders from my organization
came together to learn, react, and pivot.
We knew the stakes were literally critical.
Not only did we have to guide the parents and protect the children we cared for,
we also had to protect each other.
I became the singular voice for my 1200 colleagues
who got up every day to put their mask and goggles back on,
making sure to give them the key highlights
and avoid the TL;DR version of the science from that day,
so I could keep them from getting severely ill or worse.
My phone blew up all times of the day and night
with offers from the community to make us masks -
thank you -
and later on, with questions
about whether or not we should access medicines like ivermectin
for anyone who tested positive.
No.
It was around the clock intensity
I hadn’t encountered since my residency training some 20 years ago.
The changes brought on by the pandemic
sent a ripple effect through the healthcare world,
charging us with the responsibility to adapt our function
from traditional medicine to health education
on top of prevention and treatment.
Where previously we prioritized getting people well,
we now realized that getting people properly informed
and trustful of their sources
was just as, and in many cases more important, in order to keep them healthy.
That is where the biggest challenge of healthcare
during the past three years truly lay.
It became very clear
that controlling the person-to-person misinformation transfer
was like trying to stop an arterial hemorrhage with a Band-Aid.
After a conversation with a colleague about our efforts to be steady resources
to so many in our circle,
we decided to offer our distillation of the current knowledge of COVID-19,
with particular regard to children, free to the public via webinars.
We saw a vast gap of reliable information tailored for parents and families,
so we raced to fill this gap for our community.
Little did we know our webinars would go on
to represent the pandemic-prompted change
that took healthcare education out of doctors’ offices
and into the public forums.
I began by using my social media channels
to spotlight robust research with a tone of reason rather than fear.
The webinars we hosted were designed to act as trustworthy,
relatable, and accessible sources
of credible and actionable COVID-19 knowledge.
Our hope is to give parents and anyone who tunes in
the tools to make wise, informed choices for their families.
The pandemic made it impossible
to simply pop into your pediatrician’s office with quick concern,
so we wanted to create a way to recreate that ability to some extent.
Very soon, my inbox began to fill with notes from grateful parents
who had been searching for some non-alarmist expertise,
someone with whom they could travel this pandemic journey
and with whom they could make the necessary changes comfortably
and upon a foundation of science.
Even though we are no longer required to stay at home
and children are back in school in person,
our webinars continue to give hope, reassurance, and knowledge
to the thousands of viewers who tune in.
Specifically because of the cultural shift
created by the pandemic within the medical community,
people are now more open to getting care advice
from a large forum, like a webinar,
and not solely relying on their own individual doctor.
I believe that this approach to sharing accurate medical information,
evidence based, consistent, accessible, around-the-clock, relatable,
and public is vital and arguably the future of healthcare education.
It’s the modern version of the bedside doctor-patient relationship
that can be just as personal but much more convenient.
And while it will never replace individualized care,
it has an effective and critical place in health knowledge delivery.
The COVID-19 pandemic
changed the way people learn about and direct their own healthcare.
The medical community responded by changing the way we approach,
educate, and care for our patients.
People became more attentive and knowledgeable
as they struggled through the sea of misinformation
created out of fear and political agenda.
Change happens all around us, whether we like it or not.
We can fear and freeze, or we can adjust and change with it.
We can use it as an opportunity to become better doctors - more patient centered,
better patients - more educated,
and better humans - more curious.
By standing up for children and families during the pandemic,
by helping translate all the changes that have occurred over the past three years,
my colleagues and I were able to help families navigate and assess
the levels of risk presented to them on a daily basis.
We were empowered to grow in confidence and in turn, empower others,
not just one at a time, but a packed webinar-full.
My hope is that this wave of change in healthcare education
creates more ripples
and continues to motivate people to learn about their health,
relying on evidence-based science rather than agenda-driven narratives.
COVID-19 might not be the leading news topic in was the spring of 2020,
but it is still very much present in our lives,
along with a myriad of other health-related concerns
to which we must remain attentive.
The medical community, in which I proudly serve,
was prompted to enact tremendously positive changes in our communities
and the way we teach others about their children’s health.
For all the terrible loss and destruction that this pandemic caused,
let its legacy be the improvement in how we talk about health and medicine
and the way we probe, research, and discuss health-related topics.
If nothing else were to come from this global crisis,
may it be for the positive changes to continue in healthcare education.
Our future and our children’s future depend on it.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)