(bright music)
(gentle uplifting music)
- I'm Kathryn O'Melia.
I am the Service Chief for VA Palo Alto Prosthetics,
a Marine Corps veteran.
From the years of 2000 to 2004, I was on active duty.
- I'm Odette Harris, and I am a Professor of Neurosurgery.
I'm the Director of brain injury at Stanford.
I'm also Deputy Chief of Staff of Rehabilitation
here at the Palo Alto VA.
- My name is Sherry Wren.
I'm a general surgeon.
I'm the Associate Chief of Surgery
and I'm the Head of General Surgery here.
I'm a Stanford professor,
Vice Chair of our department.
So I'm in the leadership of the Department of Surgery,
Site Director for Graduate Medical Education,
which is our Residency program.
Residents get the vast majority
of their robotic surgery training in this VA.
- Prosthetics is actually the pharmacy of stuff.
That's the easiest way to put it.
What everyone believes it is
is just artificial arms and legs and things like that.
Those aren't all of our patients.
Anybody who has a body function that could be improved
is someone who needs a prosthetic item.
Now, that could be that you're diabetic
and you need to check your blood sugar.
So we take care of glucometers.
Maybe it's just an ambulatory aid, like a cane or a walker.
Maybe they need a wheelchair for patients
with high spinal cord injuries, or they have ALS.
All of those items are our prosthetic items.
We get a nearly 500 consults a day.
Thankfully, I had a military background
and I understood leadership in a different way
than they teach in lots of other places.
We're gonna set standards.
We're gonna say, "This is my expectation of you,
and this is how we're gonna get there,
and making sure that we always put the patient
as the number one thing."
- Palo Alto VA is just an incredible place.
It's unique, I think, in many ways.
Let's take traumatic brain injury.
We're one of five polytrauma centers in the country,
focusing on recovery from traumatic brain injury
secondary to blast, what we've termed
as polytrauma within the VA system.
We have just the entire spectrum of offerings
from inpatient and acute care to the transitional programs,
where patients are going from acute
to sort of independence or progressive independence.
We rank in the top 3% of the entire country
when it comes to rehabilitation.
So we know for certain
that the care that we're delivering is outstanding.
And the collaboration with Stanford as a VA
helps us do that.
It keeps us on this or people say the bleeding edge
or the cutting edge of innovation.
We're working with the best and brightest in all realms.
- I would say my day is sort of broken up
by what day of the week with the type of surgeries I do.
I have patients who are in the hospital
typically somewhere between 5 to 10 days
after their operation,
so I would always be seeing my patients.
In addition, we're a training program.
So we train general surgery residents here.
We also have medical students,
and we have physician assistant students
that come over from Stanford University.
As a cancer surgeon,
and I treat really tough cancers, right,
you know, pancreas cancer
is probably the most lethal cancer you can get,
my patients are happy because I buy them good time
and sometimes I cure them.
You know, that makes me happy.
I hate cancer.
It's like a battle.
Cancer's really ugly.
When you are operating on somebody,
you know, it's cancer, you know it does.
It looks wrong; it feels wrong.
I love being able to get cancer out of people.
And I like to win that war, and it is a war.
(gentle calming music)
- I serve veterans because I am one.
When I first got out of the service and went to the VA,
it wasn't super great.
I don't want it to continue to be that way.
I wanna be able to, this is our standard of care
and we're gonna make it better.
There's nothing that can compare us on the outside,
not only the way that the VA does,
but especially when it comes to the prosthetics department.
So why not be the best?
Let's set the expectation
for what every patient should have.
- My field is incredibly niched, neurosurgery.
It is a small field,
and women only represent approximately 5.4%
of board certified neurosurgeons in the United States.
However, I think the VA has done an incredible job
of fostering inclusivity and diversity in its leadership.
In my own path, I've absolutely felt valued.
I've absolutely felt included
both at Stanford and at the VA.
And I think that that sense of value
has empowered me to do the kind of work that I do.
We recognize that in order to foster this inclusive culture
and to have the next generation of leaders
look like our country, look like our veterans,
we have to really support that.
Our veterans are more diverse than ever.
And I think it is our responsibility
to better understand that
and to tailor our clinical offerings to meet those needs,
wherever and however they present in our population.
- I think it's important
to have strong women leaders wherever you go.
Women make up half the population.
If you're not having women
in every position,
having women and men leaders equally,
you're kind of losing out on a lot of talent.
I also think that everybody brings
something different to the tables.
I don't think that patients
can only be treated by someone that looks like them.
I think that what we need to do
is learn how to treat everybody
the best we can as human beings
and have them treat you equally that way.
- My goal is to make sure
that we're offering the best that we can,
to make sure that every day is better than the day before,
to make sure that those around us including our communities
understand the value, not only of the VA,
but of the veterans in our community and their sacrifices.
- We wanna earn their care.
We wanna earn their trust.
We want to show them that this was the promise
that the military made to you.
This is what we're here for, and we prove it.
(gentle upbeat music)