For the last two days, I’ve been off at Fletcher Allen Health Care/UVM College of Medicine getting a brain chip implanted about the good work going on at our state’s largest hospital and med school. They do this by:
a) feeding us;
b) introducing us to extremely interesting people who are doing extremely interesting work they are very excited about and who genuinely acted like their favorite thing in the world is to tell other people about it even if those other people are grasping about 1/999th of the science involved.
Nine of us from various walks of Vermont life were in Fletcher Allen’s latest "Community Rounds Intern Program." Also in the class that might be of interest to political blog readers: former state Sen. and possible future candidate for something Matt Dunne of Hartland and former state Rep. Frank Mazur of South Burlington. Dunne, a Democrat, and Mazur, a Republican, pondered for a moment while we were visiting a gene lab whether there is a gene that makes one a liberal or a conservative. They quickly agreed such things do not run in families.
We spent time alternately hearing from hospital mucky-mucks and shadowing doctors, touring labs, seeing the real work of the place. We did not get lost only because someone was always came back to fetch us and take us to the next place, but lemme tell you that new building is sprawling.
I can’t tell you the specifics about the patients I saw or the Fletcher Allen people will come to my home in the middle of the night and put a syringe of something deadly into my veins. Plus, it would be really rude to the patients who unanimously let me watch them while they were at their most vulnerable. (Doctor: "Is it OK if this random person from the community whose knowledge of medicine is limited to pain=bad stands here while I discuss the intimate details of your person?" Patient: "Yeah, sure." Me: "Aw, thanks.")
Suffice to say, though, there was stuff that made you want to cry, wince, shake your head and smile.
What I can tell you is this:
- The new Fletcher Allen buildings are pretty cool, though plenty of people still bring up the name Bill Boettcher in a less than favorable way. I was told that the space with really nice views that was to be Boettcher’s office before he got convicted of hiding the costs of the parking garage is now, rather ironically, the endoscopy department, where people go to have their ends scoped.
- When you look at the cost of the equipment around you, you start to feel like you have a fever. It’s not hard to imagine why health care costs so bleeding much.
- Then when you see somebody who’s really sick, and what that equipment can do for them, you can’t believe you ever gave a thought to how much it costs. You wonder instead why there isn’t more of it.
- Technology has changed things in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The hospital just submitted a certificate of need for an electronic records program that is all the rage, but the amount of stuff going on electronically surprised me. Digital X-rays are available in minutes. Lab reports pop up on a doctor’s computer screen almost as quickly. Doctors check which patient they’ll be seeing next from a computer screen or a BlackBerry. When the computer system goes down – and I’m told it happens from time to time – they have to scramble to revert to non-computerized ways of doing things.
- Really smart people who are performing cutting-edge procedures on patients and finding ways to thwart cancer in laboratories are younger than me. Which felt odd.
- People at Fletcher Allen and the University of Vermont College of Medicine really are finding ways to thwart certain cancers.
- They are also teaching medicine in different ways than they used to at UVM. No more anatomy class. Anatomy is filtered into lots of different classes, because as you might suspect, knowledge of the human body comes up frequently in the practice of medicine. Stats from the first class to be taught this way for all four years indicate the students are faring well on national tests with it. Med students also have access to just about all their class information online.
- There aren't enough of those youngsters in the pipeline to do this kind of work. Despite all the advances in technology and medicine, the hospital is still facing trouble down the line from a shortage of doctors, nurses and every other job connected to health care. When we baby boomers start needing those probes put down our veins, will there be enough radiologists to go around? Will there be enough health care money to pay for the probes?
So the brain chip is working, to a degree. I learned about a lot of cool things Fletcher Allen and the med school are doing. Don’t worry, though, I kept the cynicism gene. When they were talking about the new way of teaching medicine, I asked if that had gone over without objection among all the instructors. No, we were told, it was a close vote.
- Terri Hallenbeck
