{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/w66930qg1x/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Jen Bacani McKenney"]},"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":["2021-04-13 (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","rural","pandemic","Fredonia","Kansas","vaccine"]}}],"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/000/202/347/small/JenBacaniMcKenney_MD%284-13-21%29.mp4_1690914373.jpg?1690914373","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102725/file/202347","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Jen_Bacani_McKenney__MD_(4-13-21).mp4"]},"duration":2181.76,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/202/347/small/JenBacaniMcKenney_MD%284-13-21%29.mp4_1690914373.jpg?1690914373","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102725/file/202347/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102725/file/202347/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/202/347/original/Jen_Bacani_McKenney__MD_%284-13-21%29.mp4?1690914372","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":2181.76,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102725/file/202347","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102725/file/202347/transcript/47177","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Transcript of Dr. Jen Bacani McKenney [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102725/file/202347/transcript/47177/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Morgan Weiler: Okay. So would you please give your full name?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Yeah. It's Jennifer Bacani McKenney.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Great. And then what is your present title?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Well, I have multiple at this point like a lot of us in rural America. My main thing is that I'm a family physician at the Bacani/McKenney Clinic. It's a clinic that I own and manage in Fredonia, Kansas. I'm also the Assistant Dean for Rural Medical Education at KU Med. I'm also the Wilson County Health Officer.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Great. And then where did you attend medical school?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I went to KU Medical School. I did first and second year in Kansas City, third and fourth year in Wichita.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Great. And then where did you complete your residency?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I did that at the Via Christi Family Medicine Residency in Wichita, Kansas\n\nMorgan Weiler: Okay. Can you speak a little bit about your current positions and then what your daily schedule looks like?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Sure. This is in COVID times, yes? Right now?\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yes.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Okay. My full-time gig is to be a family doctor of course, so I'm in the clinic most of the time seeing patients with chronic issues, hypertension, diabetes, that kind of stuff, acute things as well. We do diagnose people and swab people for COVID. We're the ones gowning up and doing the swabbing. We're seeing them out in the parking lot or doing phone visits or tele-health visits or in the clinic. That's my real full-time job.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I do that about three days a week, because the rest of the time I do all the other things. I do full spectrum family medicine, minus OB, so I don't deliver babies on purpose. Sometimes they just show up and it's rude if you don't deliver them.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: But otherwise, as the Assistant Dean for Rural Health for KU Med I help coordinate the students on their rural rotations. I help with the Rural Health Task Force at KU Med.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: My County Health Officer thing is the newest. I've been the Wilson County Health Officer for nine years now. I became the county health officer because the previous one died. That's how a lot of us get this job, and then someone says, \"Well we have to have one so would you like to do it?\" And here I am. So for the first eight years I was signing off on vaccine protocols and doing public health education like smoking cessation, breastfeeding, that kind of stuff. I one time inspected a lagoon.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: But since March of 2020 it's been a whole different story. On top of my full-time job as a family doctor, I run our county meetings that we were doing weekly. We're making decisions for the county as far as quarantine and vaccinations.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Probably one of my biggest jobs as county health officer is just educating people, answering questions all the time. These days it's mostly about vaccines. People in rural areas, they pretty much have access to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week because they either have my cell phone number, we're friends on Facebook or something so they'll find me on social media. So it has been pretty nonstop.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: It slowed down a little bit since last year, but it's still a lot of questions. You go to the grocery store or the coffee shop and somebody's asking you questions about COVID. So my main job right now with public health is really just the education piece and helping coordinate vaccines.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Great. So going back to the start of COVID, how did that initially impact your work?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I know COVID came to Kansas on March 6th. I'll always remember that. That was a Friday, and by March 9th, that Monday, I had gathered together a group of people in our county, the hospitals, the schools, churches, businesses, the different clinics, government officials, people in our county who were stakeholders. I said, \"We've got to get together and talk about what's going on.\"\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: We started with an in-person meeting, which is funny now. So we're all smushed into this room, and we just started talking to them about, what is COVID? What can we do? What can't we do? How do we test for it? What are the symptoms? At that time, I started that first meeting with, \"This is what coronavirus is, and this is what COVID-19 is. This is what we know, and this is what we don't know.\" It's very interesting to think back that far. It was such basic information, like this is how you get tested, and this is how it’s spread.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: So we just started doing those meetings every week for months, just trying to educate our county and get everybody on the same page, like this is what quarantine looks like in our county. This is what testing is available in our county.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: At the same time, my health department administrator, Destany Wheeler and I ... We're both in our hometown. We actually graduated high school together, which was nice. If I'm going to do all this stuff during a pandemic it might as well be with somebody who I really enjoy and am good friends with and respect. She's been great.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: The week after our first county meeting, we started doing Facebook Live sessions every week. Because we knew also there's all the stakeholders we’re reaching at our county meetings, but the general public was just scared. They didn't know. They were still asking questions like, how do I get this? What do I do? How can I keep myself safe? What am I looking for?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: So we started doing Facebook Live sessions and every week they would just ask us questions. We'd answer every single question that popped up. Again, it's interesting to go back and say, \"Well don't wear masks because we need to save all the masks for the healthcare workers and it's not going to help anything.\" Then we come back later and it's like, \"Oh yes, you have to wear a mask, but don't wear the N95,\" Things evolved along that whole timeline.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I don't know how it's possible, but you keep doing your work. Diabetes doesn't stop. Hypertension doesn't stop. Cancer doesn't stop. But you just add everything on top of that.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: So we do all the public health stuff. I was probably spending as much time on the public health stuff as I was on family medicine. It was really crazy. I was at that time making, I think, $600 a month because that was my usual fee for being a county health officer and signing things. So for that whopping lump sum of money, I was really spending probably at the beginning nearly 30 to 40 hours a week, and then that's on top of everything else.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: But you just do it because people are scared and people don't know. We started in our clinic saying, \"Don't come in right now. We don't know how to keep you safe yet. We don't have all the PPE. So let's cancel your visit for now unless you need to be seen, and then let's ride this out for a few weeks and then things will get better.\" Of course it didn't, but at the beginning you were like, \"Oh yeah, we just need to get through this. We can do this.\"\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Then we started realizing, no, we've got to figure this out. So a few weeks into it we started saying, \"Okay, come on in. But if you think you're sick make a phone visit, or we'll meet you out in the parking lot and do your visit that way or we'll do tele-health visits.\" We found a way to meet our patients where they felt safe, where they were, and keeping them safe and making sure that we were keeping ourselves safe too. So it was just a lot, changing the way that we see patients and then adding just a whole second job on top of my full-time job.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Wow. That sounds like a challenge in itself maybe, but were there any other challenges that you and your practice faced with COVID-19? That can be anywhere from the start to the middle to now with vaccine administration.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Sure. Early on I think the biggest thing was just how to take care of patients, and keep us safe and keep the patients safe. About probably May or June, that's when our whole state went into lock down and shut down all the businesses. Schools were shut down. Then we were trying to reopen things, and that's about the time when things started changing.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Our biggest challenge then was frustration, I think, from people, just wanting to open everything up. They were saying, “My business is failing. What am I supposed to do?” People were sneaking around cutting hair when it was like illegal to do it and pretending they weren't, and then they'd get mad if we said not to do that. So it was frustration and it was anger, and we were trying to get things opened up and opened up safely. That was probably our next biggest challenge, the frustration and the fear. “Is my business going to make it through this? Is my restaurant going to be okay?”\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: The next phase I think of challenges was really just all the misinformation. “This is a hoax.” “Masks don't work.” People were still calling it the “China flu” and the “Kung flu.” Obviously, not everybody in Southeast Kansas looks like me, and so that was its own challenge of people saying, \"That's what it is, right? The China flu?” I'm like, \"No, that's not okay.” Then some got angry saying that I was trying to say that people were racist and saying there's no racism in Fredonia. Yes, there is racism everywhere. So misinformation, all the YouTube videos, the random memes, social media, that was a big part of it.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Probably the next challenges then were really chronically were people not wanting to wear masks. There were people not wanting to wear masks from the beginning, but then we started saying, \"Okay, our numbers are bad. People are dying. We need to put in a mask mandate.\"\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: We had a public mask hearing, people stood up and said, \"This is against my rights.” “I have the right to not wear a mask.” “Only one percent of people die and that's fine.\" One percent for our town is 25 people that don't need to die, and we're okay with that?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: It was hurtful. People I'd known forever, that I went to school with or that were my patients at one point were bad mouthing me and saying, \"She's just trying to push her own agenda. She can't tell us to wear masks. We need to fire her and find somebody who doesn't want us to wear masks.\" That was probably the worst of it all, where it really became hurtful. It's personal at that point.  I remember thinking, \"But we're friends. We were friends and what's happening?\"\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Then we move into the new year, and now the biggest thing is vaccine hesitance. We even have healthcare workers that don't want to get vaccinated. We're having a hard time now finding people who want to be vaccinated. It's just really disheartening, because it's our way out. Everybody wanted a way out and now we have a way out and they aren't taking it. \n\nMorgan Weiler: No, this is great. That is one of the things that I've heard and it really breaks my heart, is just the pushback, and I would call it almost abuse.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Yeah.\n\nMorgan Weiler: But to go off of that, how did you manage your professional life and then your personal life during COVID during all these times?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: It was difficult. It's still difficult. When people have asked about those attacks and those hurt feelings, I have told them, \"I think we're going to be done with COVID before we're done with the hurt feelings.\" Because there are a lot of things that people did and said that people remember, like not wearing masks and making a big deal about not wearing masks or not social distancing or throwing parties,, and bad mouthing me on social media, calling for me to get fired. Those are things that stick with you for a while.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I would say personally, it's been really hard because you take things very personally. You're putting all your energy into helping people and answering questions and making sure that we're keeping people safe. And then to have people come back and say, \"No, we're not listening to you. We listened to you for a decade of you taking care of us and our kids. But now we're not going to listen anymore for whatever reason.\" That's hard. It's hard to separate the personal from the professional.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I'm on the school board too, I forgot to mention that. At the time I was the president of the school board and you can imagine that was difficult.  I stepped down in July because  it was too much to do that also. I remained on the school board.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: There was just a lot of anger on the school board and the school board members themselves that were anti-mask also.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: There were moments where everything just became too much in a day. So I would just wait until everyone had gone from the clinic, shut my door and just cry for a while before I went home to be with my kids and my husband. I didn't want to bring that home. But they would hear me talk about stuff people were saying and doing.  I would talk to them about doing the right thing and protecting people and keeping people safe. Even if people are saying bad things about you, it's about integrity and it's about really trusting what you know and not backing down. I think those were good learning opportunities for them. But it's more than I want my kids, who are 10 and 7, to have to witness.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: There was a point where I I invited my office staff, who was my cohort at the time, over to my house for an outdoor barbecue where we were all distanced and we stayed outside. Again, it was my same group of people that I always hung out with every day.  Then I had somebody who I had known for a long time, who I had golfed with before. He drove by videoing my house and then shared that with the other people trying to make me look bad. Next thing I know, within five minutes there were people on social media saying that I don't think rules apply to me.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Wow.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: It’s one thing to see it on social media or hear about it. You're going to hear about everything in a small town. I know who's saying bad things about me because that's what we do here. Not just the bad things, but we always hear everything. But it's a whole other thing when you have children at home and somebody is driving by videoing your house and that's not okay.\n\nMorgan Weiler: No.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Yeah. We had that mask hearing that I mentioned, and after the mask the Sheriff's deputies came up to me and my health department administrator and said, \"Hey, whenever you're ready you go. We'll walk out with you.\" They were very casual about it. I'm like, \"What do you mean? Why?\" And they said,  \"Well, we just want to make sure you're safe.\" Then for the first time I was like, \"Well, I guess maybe I might not be safe walking out of here.\" It was enough that they thought that I might not be safe.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I made it home fine, and that very next day the kids were in remote school. So I said to my cousin who was helping out with the kids, I said, \"Can you just maybe keep them towards the back of the house? You just never know.\" To have to, in a small town, your hometown, to protect your kids in case something happens at the front of your house, that's a scary thing. So it's been very personal, because then we're starting to talk about the children's safety.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: So yeah, I don't know that I managed it well. I don't know that I manage it well now. When we put all of our hearts into the things that we do and we truly believe in the work we're doing, there's not much of a separation between our professional and personal lives.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yeah. So what do you feel you did right during the pandemic?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: One thing that I remember saying at the very beginning is a public health tenant of “if it looks like we overreacted, we probably did the right thing.”Because you'll never see the lives that were saved. You'll never see the disease that was prevented. It's just going to look like we did too much. And I feel pretty good about that, because if we look back, I would never say, \"Oh, we shouldn't have shut down schools or we shouldn't have shut down businesses.\" Because I don't know, maybe one more person might've died had we not done that, and I'm not okay with that.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I feel good about being aggressive and being safe. I feel good about trusting the science, sharing the science. I feel good about communicating with both the stakeholders in town and the general public and being accessible. I'll tell you, it wore me out. It still wears me out. But I feel good about the effort and the time and the dedication I gave to my community, being there for them if they had questions, if they had fears, if they just didn't know and they just wanted somebody they trusted to give them an answer.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yeah. So who did you, you've already mentioned some of those stakeholders, but who did you work closely with during the pandemic and how did that help you move throughout the times?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Definitely my partner in crime would be Destany Wheeler, my health department administrator, and truly we talked every day, all day and we still do now. Every day there are text messages about something. She would be my main person. I will tell you, I feel really good about the work that we did. Even in our small community, we had urban areas, like Kansas City, Wichita, Topeka saying, \"Hey, I like what you guys are doing there. Do you have that written up? Can we borrow that?\" And we were just thinking, we're doing some good work here. \n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I worked very closely with my superintendent. He was very much on the same page but also has to answer to a school board and that makes it difficult too. But I know that he had in his mind that the most important thing was to keep kids safe and he found ways to do that just by keeping masks in school and closing down when we needed to close down.  But he was also flexible in knowing when our numbers were down and we could open up a little bit.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: We have two critical access hospitals in our County, and normally we're competitors. We're 10 miles apart, and I think through this it's really brought us together because we've been sharing resources. We've talked about what we were each doing. Are you allowing visitors? How are you testing for this? What are you doing here? It's been really nice to be able to collaborate with them.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Same for all the Southeast Kansas hospitals. We're all smaller hospitals, and we normally are competitors. But when we got to a point where we couldn't find hospital beds in urban areas, so we could transfer out our patients that needed ventilators or ICUs, we started talking to each other and saying, \"Okay, if you send me a patient that just needs IV antibiotics, it'll make room for a patient of ours that has COVID that needs to be in an ICU.” So we would talk about what beds were available and how can we partner on things.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yes. So who impressed you? This could be anyone in your county. This could be anyone in the state. This could be anyone in the nation. Just who impressed you during this time, and then why?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Number one, I would say the children impressed me, and namely my children. I'm biased, but for example, we don't have a mask mandate anymore in our schools because of all the legislature in Kansas. Bad decisions in Kansas. My kids have the option to wear a mask and I said, \"Hey, you're not required to wear a mask anymore as of tomorrow.\" And they said, \"Yeah, but we're still going to wear them.\" And they're wearing them every day. They're not afraid. I said, \"Are people bothering you?\" \". Nope.\" \"Are your friends wearing them?\" \"Well, not all of them are.\" \"Are you okay with masks?\" \"Yeah,\" every day. It's just amazing. They're so resilient.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: The kids weren't the ones complaining about masks. The parents were. The kids were the ones who understood it meant they could play with their friends if they wear their mask. It's not a big deal. So I think kids impressed me the most.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: There’s one woman named Diane who is in our town. She is retired, and every day of every week through the pandemic, once we got into that probably June, July time, she was buying out of her own pocket, hand sanitizer and masks and would deliver it to the clinics, the hospitals, restaurants, businesses, and just keep delivering them over and over and over and over. At one point we said, \"Okay, we actually have enough.\" She bought us pizzas the other day, and this is a retired woman.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Sometimes the businesses would laugh at her and say, \"You can take your stupid masks out of here.\" She would text me and say, \"This was a little rough today, but I'm still doing it.\" And I'm like, \"Go get them. Keep kicking ass. You're doing the right thing,\" and she did. She just kept doing it just because it was the right thing. That's one person. She's just amazing. She cares about making it easy for people to do the right thing.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: At the beginning of the pandemic we knew that people were going to have trouble because they weren't working and kids weren't in school so they were going to have trouble getting food. So we put together a task force.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: But this one woman, Deb, took it and ran. Her husband built these blessing boxes. two or three times a week, starting in April, she puts food that people donated in these blessing boxes, so people could take some granola bars or toothpaste and a toothbrush. She does this every week and just makes sure that people don't run out.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: We don't know who's using it all. We do know that people have been vocal about how helpful it's been. But that's a lot of work also. \n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I am impressed, and this is not just because I want to promote us, but I'm impressed with the family docs in our state, in our country. If the government, the payers, the patients, the general public, if people cannot see the role that family docs have played in this pandemic, then they are not looking. Because we're the ones that are swabbing and treating, and we're taking care of patients in the hospitals and in the parking lots and in their homes. We're giving the vaccines and we're educating.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: We're the public health officers and most of us had no training to do any of this stuff. I don't have my masters in public health. I just am somebody who will do the thing, and that's how a lot of family doctors are. We'll do all the things that we need to do because that's what we've always done.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: It's just been amazing to see family doctors in their element, because we just roll with it. We know that if we're in the ER, a 10 car pile up can show up, and then we just do it. That's the same with this pandemic. We know that we don't know, but we know that we have some knowledge of how to help people and we know how to figure out how to help people and we've done it throughout the whole thing.\n\nMorgan Weiler: That's pretty cool. What changes brought by COVID will be permanent or do you think will be permanent?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I think, generally, we know that masks work. We need to be wearing masks more often.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I think things like tele-health and telephone visits and just the idea that all the patient care doesn't have to happen in an exam room. I think that's another thing that is going to be permanent. It's forced us into jumping into tele-health maybe before we were ready, but then we found out we were ready and we can do this. And again, just being willing to be creative about the way that we care for patients is something that I hope will stay.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Yeah. This is my favorite question. What is your sense of where family medicine is going in the future?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: My hope is and my belief is that this pandemic has really brought to light the importance of family medicine. I hope students are seeing that.\n\nMorgan Weiler: I think everybody will. I have another interview at 11.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: Yeah. We have just done the work, and we've been able to care for patients at every single level of this pandemic.  I believe that the value of family medicine has been apparent throughout all of this.  I hope that reaches the payers, the government, the people who make the decisions about how we get paid. It's not all about payment, but part of it is because we also work really hard to get here and we work really hard every day, and I think we should be valued appropriately for the work that that we do.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: So I believe that family medicine is going to come out, when we look back, as heroes in the pandemic, , on the public health side, in the ICUs and the ERs. And I believe that we will realize that our patients are safer because of us, that they went to the source that they trusted when they didn't know about COVID and they weren't sure about vaccines. We were the ones that were able to talk with them and calm their fears or convince them that getting a vaccine was the right thing to do.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I always believed that that family medicine is the foundation of all of healthcare. But I think when you throw us into a pandemic it's very obvious that not only is it a foundation, but we're at every level also, not just at the base but throughout the entire patient's timeline of care and levels of care. \n\nMorgan Weiler: That's great. So is there anything else you'd like to add, COVID or non-COVID related to this?\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I don't think so. I just laughed so much about everything, sorry.\n\nMorgan Weiler: No, no. I do too. If you were asking me questions, the same thing would happen.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD:  I just it's really like people are so resilient. In the end, we talk about the abuses, the attacks on public health and on science.. But there are always going to be more supportive people, more loving people, more good people out there than there are the bad guys. I hate to say the bad guys, but you know what I mean. I never want to lose sight of that.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: This is ridiculous, but, okay, this is my ... Hold on, this is my wall here. You can see all these letters and cards and stuff from my kids.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Aw.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: But those are from people all over the country that saw, and I would have never thought to do something like this, but I was on some TV interviews and media things, and I got this the other day from a nurse in Virginia.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Wow.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: She made this for me, and it said expressly for Jennifer Bacani McKenney by Judy Walker, the Irish flower symbolizes message. Jennifer is getting the message out to correct misinformation about the coronavirus that's saving lives. Then she wrote me this whole nice letter.\n\nMorgan Weiler: Wow.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: So imagine, these people are just out there and they care so much to do things like this. That's why I have them up, because when I feel bad.. Look at all of the love and support there is out there, which is all so wonderful. So I never want to lose sight of that in the grand scheme of things.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I hope all family physicians, I hope all people in public health right now get some sort of letter or painting or something else that it tells them they're doing the right thing, because it hasn't been easy. But it's been worth it.\n\nJen Bacani McKenney, MD: I wouldn't wish a pandemic on us ever again, but if I had to work hard for my community again in a similar capacity, I would do it again. It's that the people are worth it, and just setting a good example for students, for our children, that's really what's important. Anyway, isn't that fun?\n\nMorgan Weiler: I love that. That's beautiful, and I thank you for sharing that too. I have an idea too. Maybe I'll have to go talk with Dr. Kellerman about it [crosstalk]. I need to write about it or something because that's really sweet. Well, that's it. Let me pause this.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2334/collection_resources/102725/file/202347#t=0.0,2181.76"}]}]}]}