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Lithuanian Emergency Medicine Doctors Continue Their Residency at Cincinnati Hospital
04/08/2019

Continuing a 7 step program to expose 22 Lithuanian Physicians training in the specialty of Emergency Medicine about how to manage and direct Emergency Medicine Departments in community hospitals, 4 more young residents from Lithuania joined Emergency medicine doctor Herb Loyd, head of Emergency medicine at Cincinnati hospital Kurt Knochel and their incredible team of experts for 5 weeks.


Three years ago Emergency Medicine pioneers in Kaunas and Vilnius joined the experts in Cincinnati with the help of the Kazickas Family Foundation to gain knowledge and experience. Since then 18 Emergency Medicine residents from Lithuania traveled to Cincinnati already.

 

While two residents, Audrys Kukulskis and Sarunas Maciulevicius, are still finishing up their work in Cincinnati, Lina Simenaite and Rolanda Kazlauskaite successfully completed their training and share their gratitude and experience:

 

Lina Simenaite:

"EM physicians experience burnout 3 times that of an average physician. 48% of EM physicians report experiencing burnout. ~1 doctor per day commits suicide in USA. 28-40 per 100 000 people. ~27% of EM physicians seek help. These are only a few alarming facts. These and some other personal stories are the reason I chose this special project.

With Dr. H. Loyd's and Dr. K. Knochel's help I talked to people that are blazing a trail here for physician wellness, namely, Pete Dowiatt, Sara Continenza, who were the leaders and guides for this project, Dr. Jennifer Molano, who gave me a lot of very useful information, especially for starting the work on physician wellness from the scratch; talking with Dr. Jeremy Liebman gave me great insight on managing a group dedicated to this goal and others I have met, who have talked to me and explained their role and various ways of tackling this.

My three focal points to begin with are: burnout recognition and seeking help, suicide prevention, giving bad news. I am also going to measure resident and physician depression and burnout rates, compare them before and after intervention.

I would also like to thank Dr. Knochel and all the other people that helped me learn and understand their roles and the way our system might be improved. I will forever be grateful for this opportunity.

Finally, I would like to thank all of the people that made this program possible. Me and, undoubtedly all the other residents, thank you."

 

Rolanda Kazlauskaite:

"First of all, I'm extremely grateful to you for believing in this project few years ago and for creating an amazing opportunity for Lithuania's Emergency Medicine residents to learn and to train. Thank you for giving me an opportunity not just to gain professional experience, but also to grow as a person by spending 5 weeks in a different culture surrounded by the most incredible people.

I arrived to Cincinnati as a 3rd year resident working on a project "Patient Safety". I chose this topic because of a sad situation I see in Lithuania every day and would like to make a difference. In Lithuania the "Silence Culture" is deeply rooted in the medical world and people are afraid to talk about the mistakes. There are serious consequences and we are not learning from the mistakes in order to prevent the future ones. We need to talk about them and take inventory. During this trip I met professionals who helped me to understand patient safety issues, shared ways to solve them, worked with me on developing plans to make changes in Lithuania.
During the residence I met few exceptional individuals whom I can call my Teachers: Herbert Loyd and Kurt Knochel. They helped me to realize the goals of my project and made me to believe in its success.
I also need to thank a large group of experts at TriHealth and Cincinnati Hospital. Quality meeting, Swarming training and ways to apply the knowledge in practice were extremely beneficial. We met with Jeff Norton, Renee Hebeler-Clark and Todd Osborn (from UC) who are Patient Safety "Gods". They worked with me on a vision how to start applying patient safety in Lithuania.
One of the most memorable experiences was during the on-call at the UCH Emergency Room where I saw the value of true teamwork helping the patient in critical condition.
A visit to the Cincinnati Air Care & Mobile Care state-of-the-art center transporting patients using helicopters and airplanes left plenty to think about in the future. We we assured that Lithuanians are welcome to train here, because NATO's goal is to have trained specialists who can fly critical patients in the Baltic states as well. Currently there are only few trained such specialists there.
I must mention the most welcoming and kind people - Herbert and his family. They invited us to their home as their own children, we spent so many memorable moments together and will never forget their love, care and dedication.
Thank you for Your kindness, all the work put into this project that I truly believe will help to improve Health Care in Lithuania."

 

Photos: Lina Semenaite and Rolanda Kazlauskaite
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