{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/804xg9gh90/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Laurel Witt"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine.  Disclaimer:  The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker’s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice. \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2021-02-08 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Covid-19 (topical term)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["family medicine","Kansas City","telemedicine","Zoom","pandemic"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/202/856/small/LaurelWitt%282-18-21%29.mp4_1691001579.jpg?1691001580","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102996/file/202856","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Laurel_Witt_(2-18-21).mp4"]},"duration":1124.128,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/202/856/small/LaurelWitt%282-18-21%29.mp4_1691001579.jpg?1691001580","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102996/file/202856/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102996/file/202856/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/202/856/original/Laurel_Witt_%282-18-21%29.mp4?1691001579","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":1124.128,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102996/file/202856","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102996/file/202856/transcript/47182","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Transcript of Dr.Laurel Witt interview [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102996/file/202856/transcript/47182/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Morgan Weiler: Will you please give your full name?\n\nLaurel Witt: Sure. My name is Laurel Brooke Witt.\n\nMorgan Weiler: And then your present title.\n\nLaurel Witt: MD.\n\nMorgan Weiler: All right. Where did you go to medical school?\n\nLaurel Witt: The University of Kansas School of Medicine\n\nMorgan Weiler: Where did you complete your residency?\n\nLaurel Witt: Oregon Health Sciences University.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Can you speak a little bit about your current positions and then what you do on a daily basis?\n\nLaurel Witt: You bet. Right now I work as faculty at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. I provide both outpatient and inpatient family medicine care at the hospital and the clinic. I also spend a good deal of my time in education and help direct the clerkship in family medicine on the Kansas City campus. And a good deal of my time goes to that in addition to some curriculum in the first and second year through lectures and small groups.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Can you tell me about the patient population you take care of in Kansas City?\n\nLaurel Witt: Sure. We take care of... I think family medicine in Kansas City feels accountable to its community. And so we look to take care of citizens of Wyandotte County. We know that we take care of folks from the greater metro area and beyond. I think we have a good mix of patients. We have a gambit of ages. I don't provide obstetric care anymore, but many of my partners do, and we take care of babies. And we also have partners who have geriatric fellowships. And so we have a good range of ages, I think, in our practice. We also have a good deal of medical complexity, which a lot of us enjoy. And one of my personal favorites is working with people to achieve their wellness goals in the context of medical complexity.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Great. So next, we're going to talk about COVID-19. Can you talk about how the pandemic has impacted your current work?\n\nLaurel Witt: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's been a tough. tough year to say the least know. I was reflecting a little bit on, it's been nearly a year, right?\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yeah, almost one year.\n\nLaurel Witt: Yeah. What last March was like and what this March is like, quite different. And this March, we're still obviously dealing with masking and distancing and some great uncertainty around variants. But vaccination is a game changer and it allows us to be, or it will allow us to be around our families and friends and colleagues again. Last March, it was different. We had so much more uncertainty. We didn't know what this was. We didn't know how to protect ourselves. We didn't know how to protect our patients. I remember the first time I walked into a hospital room to take care of somebody with this virus. And we tried to know as much as we could and we still had more questions than answers. And that felt... Well, I just don't want to ever get over that feeling of doubt and inadequacy and not being able to take care of someone or save them.\n\nLaurel Witt: And in fact, I will think of that person for the rest of my life. And she will be the person, the face that represents this whole year for me, this whole pandemic for me. And we have taken care of many more people with the virus since then. And she was sure important for me. I think when I think about my experiences over the last year, she helps me come to peace a little bit with how much we've grown and learned. And hopefully we've gotten better as a people, as a group.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yeah. So what unique challenges did you and your practice face regarding COVID-19?\n\nLaurel Witt: Like many practices early on, we shut our doors, our clinic doors early on, and did so for several weeks. I'm trying to remember how long, and I can't pinpoint when we physically reopened. But we learned how to do telemedicine overnight. At first, we were using Doximity, we were using Zoom, whatever we could get our hands on, and formalized some processes pretty quickly. And many people like myself who felt rather technologically behind were trying to ramp up and learn things. We kept providing hospital care throughout that time. And so it was a mix of sometimes some days being at home seeing patients and some days going into the hospital, which was weird to get used to.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Can you speak about the challenges you faced in your position as a clerkship director or your role in the education side of things?\n\nLaurel Witt: You bet. You bet. Boy, we've learned I think a lot in medical education this year. Obviously a top goal is to keep learners safe. These are going to be our physicians of the future and we care about them immensely. And so the first decisions we made were to close campus down. In hindsight, we, I think, have learned that it is perhaps even as important to keep learners progressing. Because in less than two years, this level where I teach, they're going to be practicing physicians and deserve to be in the clinical environments. And so this has changed everything I do about medical education. Everything the clerkship is about now is about getting folks, getting learners in the clinical environment as much as possible. Everything else is secondary. A lecture, things like that are all secondary now.\n\nLaurel Witt: So we did a lot with remote education, especially at first. And we learned that it has many failings. It's always better to get together to practice and learn things. But there's also some benefits. And so we'll be doing some teaching through remote modalities I think for the foreseeable future. Where I think where I think we can't do that is in the really complex team practicing, complex problems, working with an expert, being there with them. And then also the coaching piece. I think as we coach each other through this profession, being face-to-face is pretty important.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yeah. What are some of the pros with using technology as a supplement in education?\n\nLaurel Witt: You know, what we've learned is that it provides both learners and teachers a great deal of flexibility. For example, we used to not be able to access some of our great teachers who are our busiest clinicians and busiest leaders, because we really couldn't ask them to come give a recurring didactic every two months as we roll over the clerkship. And now we can do that with a lot greater ease. So I think our learners will have better access to more teachers. I think that, too, it's important to realize that learners and physicians alike have families, and learning from home can be a really attractive plus, and you could learn asynchronously, you can learn when it makes sense for your family and your work. And that's a real benefit. We studied this a little bit in the remote clerkship that we did, and we learned that actually far more learners had technological difficulties than we expected in the form of mostly internet interruptions, but also in the form of personal obligations outside of the medical school curriculum. So childcare, care of an older parent, or something else that if we were doing live remote sessions all day long, they certainly got interrupted by.\n\nMorgan Weiler: How did you manage professional life and personal life during COVID?\n\nLaurel Witt: By the seat of my pants.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Fair enough.\n\nLaurel Witt: It was just really making it up as I go. Because it just seems like everything changed month by month or week by week. We were home in the beginning and then we were a hybrid and then we were trying to do... I think that I owe a lot to my partner and I owe a lot to my kids because they've really changed their whole lifestyle so that I could do what I do. We would isolate from everybody else for weeks on end after certain exposures that I had. And I think about my two and four year old, and I know that affected their development, and they have just been bright, exciting, developing kids despite that. And my partners is the same despite juggling work himself. So I feel really grateful, and our relationships are strong and maybe that's a good outcome to come from all of this.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yeah. So what's the most important thing you've learned through this pandemic? If you could pick one thing.\n\nLaurel Witt: No way, that's hard. There's been so many lessons, right?\n\nMorgan Weiler: Right. And you can name two if you need.\n\nLaurel Witt: Thank you. I guess I think I've really had reinforced that community medicine matters, that being in community, providing care in a socially accountable way, in a family medicine way, I think I'm where I'm supposed to be. And sometimes things get hectic or distracted or burnt out, but it's important. And I've seen that. That's been a good thing to learn.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yeah. I would agree. If you could do the past year over, would you change anything that you've done or that you've seen done?\n\nLaurel Witt: That's a good question. That's a good question. I don't know. I think that one of the things I didn't do well in the beginning was take care of myself very well. And I stopped exercising and I stopped sleeping. And I won't do that again. So that has been a real great lesson on self care and wellness that we can figure out how to fit those things in, and should. That's probably been the biggest thing because you know what we did the best we could with everything else. We protected ourself as well as we could or as well as our supplies would allow. And we took the best care of patients that we could. And we read constantly and supported each other. And I don't have any regrets about those things.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Was there any one particular person that impressed you throughout the pandemic?\n\nLaurel Witt: Yeah, I know immediately who that is. I have lots of people who've impressed me throughout the pandemic, but my good friend and colleague, Dr. Erin Corvo, who's a family physician and one of the public health officers of Wyandotte County, which is where I practice, has been an enormous leader in our community, has been a forceful leader when needed, has been organized, and I think she's brought great clarity to the planning there. Her work this year has been so important and second to none.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Great. What changes brought by COVID-19 do you think will be permanent?\n\nLaurel Witt: Telemedicine will be permanent, which is great. I think that's a really lovely thing for patients. I think that Zoom meetings are here to say. I certainly hope the muffins at faculty meeting come back because I miss those. But what else is here to stay? I think that greeting people without a handshake is here for awhile. I'm not sure how soon that'll come back. Those are the things that come to mind first.\n\nMorgan Weiler: You've already mentioned some things, but is there anything else you see that COVID's impacted the learning of students and residents, especially in family medicine?\n\nLaurel Witt: Yeah. I thought about this a lot this year. We have had restrictions at our hospital on where students can go even now. And so I think about... So following the students who are now fourth years, at the end of their third year, they had to spend their last rotation at home. So those who are on OB, for example, may not have delivered a baby in their third year. And those who were on surgery certainly would have participated in surgical procedures on their OB rotation, but would have missed out on key skills. And I think that extends to whatever they may have missed in that last rotation. And then as they progressed through fourth year, we have not allowed them to go to the ER to admit patients due to spacing issues in our ER.\n\nLaurel Witt: Many students have not been allowed to take care of laboring patients if their COVID status is unknown. And as of yet, admitted patients who don't have a COVID test back, we have prohibited students from seeing. And so the whole process of admitting a patient from the start gets interrupted. So I think these are real interruptions that have potentially long lasting effects. I think there are plenty of ways to correct them. And those might come in the form of bootcamps in the intern year or in the fourth year once we do get access back to those critical areas. And there's probably a lot of ways to do that, but I certainly think we should pay attention to that.\n\nMorgan Weiler: What is your sense of where family medicine is going in the future?\n\nLaurel Witt: I think family medicine is poised to be community medicine in new ways, to really include all patients in ways that other specialties might not be. I think we are poised to understand, incorporate, and address structural determinants of health and disease. We're ready to incorporate those and problem solve. I think we listen well and we're ready to listen to those lessons that have to be reckoned with and have started to be reckoned with. And I think that's a really exciting place for family medicine to go. It's obviously going to stay important as a member and role player in the health system. And I think it's going to bring in these new skills and just kind of broaden up, hopefully bring in real, I don't know how to say it, but care of all people in better ways.\n\nMorgan Weiler: So are there any views on important issues in family medicine related to COVID-19 that you haven't addressed or that you'd like to add to this conversation?\n\nLaurel Witt: I don't know. I guess it feels pretty good to be a family physician at this point. It's been a tough year at times, but it's reinforced my choice to become a family physician for sure.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Okay. Thank you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102996/file/202856#t=0.0,1124.128"}]}]}]}