Transformational Times
Words of Hope, Character & Resilience from our Virtual Community
Friday, December 17, 2021
In This Issue:
Director's Corner

Perspective/ Opinion

Three Questions


Poetry Corner
  • Amanda Gorman: Good Grief
Your Turn

Announcements & Resource
Director's Corner

The Causes and Consequences of Violence are Preventable


By Adina Kalet, MD, MPH



In this week’s Director’s Corner, Dr. Kalet talks about how viewing violence and its aftermath through a public health lens provides avenues to understand and address devastating recent events …
 

On November 18, 2021, leaders from MCW’s Comprehensive Injury Center (CIC) delivered a Kern Institute Grand Rounds entitled, “414Life: An Innovative Public Health Approach to Breaking the Cycle of Violence in Milwaukee.” They described an extensive community-engaged effort which envisions ensuring that Milwaukee is a safe and resilient city where the lives of all residents are valued, promoted, and protected. The team, including Reggie Moore, Dr. Terri deRoon Cassini, Steve Hopkins, Derrick Rogers, and Tonia Liddell, shared how they implement the six-point strategy first outlined in the City of Milwaukee’s Health Department’s Office of Violence Prevention Blueprint for Peace (2017).
Perspective/ Opinion

The Holidays: Let Your Heart be Light?



By Wendy Peltier, MD

Dr. Peltier, who lives near Waukesha, reflects on how the recent Holiday Parade tragedy adds to our shared grief and collective trauma. She reminds us that we heal best if we do it in community …


Like many, I struggle to find time to restore and reflect these days. Pre-pandemic, my usual early-morning routine driving to work included listening to Today or CNN News on the radio, hoping to stay informed as I bridged my home-to-work mind frame. During the holiday season, my favorite time of year, I always replaced the news with Sirius Radio’s 24/7 Christmas Tunes channel, filling up with holiday spirit on my way in. Time alone in my car to and from work was, and continues to be, my safe haven. 
Perspective/ Opinion


Nostalgic Medicine



By Maureen Luetje, DO


Dr. Luetje, who was working in the Children’s Wisconsin Emergency Department the evening of the Waukesha Christmas Parade tragedy, shares how she felt during the moments of preparation leading up to the arrival of victims, and how the experience will shape her in the future …
 

More often than not, the journey through a medical career begins with some amount of inspiration balanced in measure with a dream of those uncommon moments that we believe will be the everyday experience. My inspirations—some mixture of my own next-door-neighbor pediatrician, the Doogie Howser of 80s TV, and a grandfather with so many stories of his days as a firefighter—led me to believe that life-saving moments are the everyday experience. Appreciative patients, the awe of medicine, following that higher purpose, right?
Three Questions for Maria Olex, PsyD


Supporting Each Other Through Grief and Loss
 
Transformational Times Editorial Board member Wendy Peltier interviews Maria Olex, a Clinical Health Psychologist on the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin Palliative Care Team about her thoughts on supporting patients, families and colleagues experiencing grief and loss during the holiday season …  


Maria answers the following questions:
  • Tell us a bit about yourself, your current role and what led you to join the Froedtert & MCW Palliative Care Team?
  • What have you noticed about the impact of the Waukesha Holiday Parade tragedy, personally and professionally, in the past several weeks?
  • Can you share some practical tips in how to support our patients, families and colleagues experiencing grief and loss during the Holiday Season?
Three Questions for Evan Gibson, M3


My Night in the ED: Treating My Community During a Mass Casualty Incident
 
Evan Gibson is a third-year medical student at the MCW-Milwaukee campus. He was working a shift in the ED the night of the Waukesha Parade incident when Froedtert and Children’s Hospital ran a mass casualty incident. Here he answers three questions on his experience working a mass casualty event as a medical student… 


Evan answers the following questions:
  • What emotions did you experience hearing about the incident/treating the patients?
  • How did you harness your fear in the moment? What advice did you receive from fellow students or physicians prior to the arrival of the patients?
  • Did you notice any characteristics or traits that the Froedtert Hospital/Children’s Wisconsin-Milwaukee Hospital workforce demonstrated that stood out to you?
Inspiring young writer, Amanda Gorman, shares a perspective on grief in her new book, Call Us What We Carry.
 
Good Grief
By Amanda Gorman


The origin of the word trauma
Is not just “wound”, but “piercing” or
“turning”,
As blades do when finding home.
Grief commands its own grammar,
Structured by intimacy & imagination.
We often say:
We are beside ourselves with grief.
We can’t even imagine.
This means anguish can call us to
Envision
More that we believed was
Carriable
Or even survivable.
This is to say, there does exit
A good grief.
 
The hurt is how we know
We are alive & awake;
It clears for us all the exquisite,
Excruciating enormities to come.
We are pierced new by the turning
Forward
 
All that is grave need
Not be a burden, an anguish.
Call it, instead, an anchor,
Grief grounding us in its sea
Despair exits us the same way it enters
 
Turning through the mouth.
Even now conviction works
Strange magic on our tongues.
We are built up again
By that we
Build/find/see/say/remember/know.
What we carry means we survive,
It is what survives us.
We have survived us
Where once we were alone,
Now we are beside ourselves.
Where once we were barbed & brutal
as blades,
Now we can only imagine.
 
Amanda Gorman is a graduate of Harvard University, a poet and activist, and the youngest inaugural poet in US history. She recited, ‘The Hill We Climb’ at the Biden Inauguration ceremony in January, 2021, which inspired many, and raised awareness around the world about the importance of poetry and reflection during times of crisis.
Every Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember back into my childhood, my dad would set up the blender in the kitchen and line up all the ingredients necessary for making malts. He's the malt master. He'd pour the milk, scoop the ice cream, add the malt powder, and blend...then stop and take a taste (an Old Fashioned cocktail also within reach)..add more malt powder...taste...until it was perfect. My mom would be on the other side of the kitchen grilling up burger patties on this old electric grill while tator tots baked to a golden crisp in the oven. 40+ years later my sisters and I carry on this tradition with our own kids from Wisconsin, Colorado and Virginia. Burgers, malts, and tots!

—Ellie McCarrier
Making holiday cookies! I enjoy baking a lot however I feel during the rest of the year I don't get a chance to bake as often as I want. The past few years I have even started creating cookie trays to give to other people. One of my favorites to make are butterhorn cookies they take some patience but are worth it. This year I will be making 6 different cookies and 3 types of mini quick breads.

—Angela Parish, Staff
For this week's reflection prompt, please answer the following question:


What is your wish for the New Year?

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Share Your Thoughts
Choose one of four names for the new MCW School of Medicine curriculum



The Curriculum Innovation Team invites you to vote for ONE of the four final naming options for the official name of the new School of Medicine curriculum. 



Call for Manuscripts
May 2023: IPE and Innovation


The May 2023 issue of the AMA Journal of Ethics® takes as its starting point that experimentation has long been a hallmark of IPE. This issue looks to illuminate interesting, important, complex, and neglected intersections of health professions' curricular goals.

Content interrogating what it means for IPE to productively influence (1) professional identity formation; (2) skill development, communication, and team-based care; (3) diagnostic openness and clinical and cultural humility; (4) and health equity will be prioritized for inclusion in this issue.

Manuscripts submitted for peer review consideration and inclusion in this issue must follow Instructions for Authors and be submitted by 30 June 2022.

Erica Chou, MD (MCW) and Michael Oldani, PhD, MS (School of Pharmacy/IPE CUW) are the guest co-editors of this issue. Inquiries can be directed to Dr. Oldani.
Kern Institute Collaboration for Scholarship Journal Club


The KICS Journal Club for Medical Education meets monthly on the second Wednesday of the month via Zoom, 12:15–1:00 PM Central. The next meeting will feature Sarah Merriam, MD, from the University of Pittsburg School of Medicine

Interested individuals can join the meeting via Zoom using the link below, or email Michael Braun to be added to the meeting invite.

  
Meeting ID: 921 1154 0031 
Passcode: KICSJoClub 
January 12, 2021
Zoom Presentation
12:15 - 1:00 pm CT
Join us for the January Kern Connection Cafe
Seeking Peer Outreach: An Integrated, Tiered Approach to Address Stigma and Isolation in Healthcare Education


Student Presenters: Meg Lieb, Marissa O’Hair, Justin York, and Cassandra Balson

Please join us for a student-led discussion that will focus on a student-led initiative to address mental health and promote suicide prevention among medical students at MCW. This presentation will describe the "Seeking Peer Outreach Initiative" currently underway at the Central Wisconsin Campus and its potential application to the MCW community at large, as well as in the communities we serve.  
 
Following the presentation, there will be an opportunity for discussion with the panel members to explore practical strategies for adoption of the "Seeking Peer Outreach Initiative" in our varied settings.  

January 27, 2022
Zoom Presentation
4:00 - 5:00 pm CT  
Save the Date
2022 Well-Being Summit
Proudly Sponsored by the Kern Institute



Save the date and plan to join us for the 2022 Well-Being Summit!
 
David Weill, MD, author of the book Exhale: Hope, Healing, and a Life in Transplant will be providing the keynote address on the topic of burnout.
 
This event is open to all and anyone interested is welcome and encouraged to attend. Be on the lookout for details to come!
 
April 5, 2022
Virtual via Zoom
9:00 am - 12:00 pm CT  
Please email Joan Weiss with any questions.
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