Talking Pediatrics

Despite many advances we have made over the last decades, black women continue to die in childbirth at rates that seem unbelievable in 2021. We have made medical advances that allow us to do things like open fetal surgery, and yet we continue to measure dramatic differences in both maternal morbidity and mortality, as well as infant mortality, based on race. On today's episode, join guest host James Burroughs, VP and Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer as he interviews Dr. Lisa Saul, perinatologist and president of The Mother Baby Center about the stark maternal health disparities that black mothers experience and how we can approach maternal fetal medicine with an equity lens to make sure that all women and all babies have the healthy outcomes they deserve.

Chances are, if you work in healthcare, you've already been vaccinated, and as vaccination rates increase, we are finally starting to see COVID infection rates and positivity rates decrease. So what does this mean? Are we on our way out of the pandemic? What comes next? Joining us on this episode is our resident COVID expert, nurse practitioner Patsy Stinchfield, who is our COVID incident commander at Children's Minnesota, senior director of Infection Prevention and a member of the ACIP vaccine committee through the CDC. Listen as we discuss where we are in this moment of the pandemic, how vaccination is going, including a look at inequity in vaccine distribution and access, and finally, when and how we can expect to get COVID vaccination for kids.

We've talked on our podcast about COVID infection in kids, how to manage the acute symptoms, how to recognize complications like MIS-C. But what about after a child recovers from COVID-19 infection? What comes next? Are kids at increased risk of cardiac complications post infection? How and when can kids safely return to sports? Join guest host Dr. Gabi Hester as she interviews pediatric cardiologist Dr. Chris Carter from the Children's Heart Clinic about these questions and more.

As of January 2021, there were over 1600 total reported cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, and 26 pediatric deaths. Given that most cases of MIS-C occur between the ages of 1-14, and kids under 16 are not yet eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, understanding how to recognize and respond to MIS-C is something that everyone working in pediatrics needs to know. On this episode, our guidelines expert, Dr. Gabi Hester, Medical Director of Clinical Outcomes at Children's Minnesota is the guest, rather than the host, and shares with us what pediatric clinicians in various settings (clinic, ED, inpatient, ICU) need to know about MIS-C.

In late 2019, a mysterious respiratory illness was sweeping across the country. No, it's wasn't COVID but vaping related lung injury, or EVALI. Once COVID hit the US in early 2020, news of vaping and vaping related lung injury nearly vanished from the news, but many questions remain unanswered. Does vaping put someone at increased risk for catching COVID? Is your risk of COVID complications higher if you have a vaping habit? How can we be sure respiratory distress is COVID and not EVALI? And most importantly, what's happening with vaping and usage patterns in youth today? Here to answer all of those questions and more is Dr. Anne Griffiths, pediatric pulmonologist and our resident vaping expert at Children's Minnesota.

On this Equity Actions episode of Talking Pediatrics, guest host James Burroughs, VP, Chief Diversity Officer, interviews Dr. Steve Nelson, pediatric hematologist and director of Children's Sickle Cell program on what it means to be a white doctor advocating for the elimination of racism in medicine. Listen Dr. Nelson's journey of discovering and understanding white privilege and systemic racism ("the racial narratives that wash over all of us"), and how this discovery shaped both his medical practice and his own sense of identity. Learn from Dr. Nelson how to sit with the discomfort of whiteness and racial oppression, discover our curiosity and shared humanity and then move forward with tools and actions to integrate into your pediatric practice that advance health equity and improve health outcomes for all of our patients.

Winter is here, and amidst the backdrop of the COVID pandemic, we can expect our usual seasonal surge in bronchiolitis in children. On this episode, Dr. Gabi Hester interviews our medical director of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Dr. Robert Sicoli, on what we know about bronchiolitis best practices, how our pediatric emergency department was able to effectively implement guidelines to reduce both length of stay and return visits for bronchiolitis and what the implications will be of caring for kids with bronchiolitis during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Join us for a unique conversation about the next frontier in simulation: Anti-Racism. Guest host Dr. Samreen Vora interviews simulation design specialist Brittany Dahlen, RN and hospital chaplain Chris Lillehei about how we can use simulation to reduce implicit bias and improve patient outcomes. Our host and guests lean into the uncomfortable topics that we tend to avoid, and explore opportunities for using simulation to help us improve skills and advance equitable outcomes. Listen to how you and your teams can simulate difficult conversations to transform how we approach the care of our patients.

We are in the middle of a public health crisis. At almost a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, infection, hospitalization and death rates are skyrocketing toward all time highs. This weeks numbers suggest that nearly two people died from COVID-19 every minute this past week. Infection rates are high, our hospitals are filling up and as the weather is getting colder, it is forcing us indoors and potentially into more exposures with upcoming holidays. It appears that the light at the end of the tunnel for all of this is the rapid development of a vaccine. And the good news is that a vaccine is on the way, in a matter of days, and here to talk to us about all things COVID vaccination is our resident expert and Hospital Incident Commander for COVID, Nurse Practitioner Patsy Stinchfield.

For decades, textbooks have recommended admitting children with croup to the hospital if they receive 2 doses of racemic epinephrine. In this podcast, we'll review recent evidence from teams at Children's Minnesota that support a new guideline recommending admission for children after 3 doses. We'll also discuss how to tease out croup from important mimickers such as bacterial tracheitis and epiglottitis.