Cook County Hospital Medical Bag: Mission Possible (updated)

What literal or figurative tool is essential for a long, fulfilling career in medicine? In this episode, healthcare veterans from Chicago’s legendary Cook County Hospital—including doctors, nurses, social workers, legal counsel, and a communications executive—reveal the items you should carry with you in your medical bag to survive and thrive.

Together, these frontline experts distill hundreds of years of collective healthcare experience into advice for working in mission-oriented health systems. Whether you are looking for medical career longevity tips or seeking inspiration to fuel your passion for patient care, this episode delivers the blueprint for a deeply rewarding medical career.

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Transcript

I'm Bill Trick, your host for Inspired to Heal in each one of my interviews with Cook County Hospital healthcare workers, I asked the question, "If you could choose one item to put into your medical bag, literal or figurative, what would it be?" Their answers distilled hundreds of years of experience into the item that they would most want in their medical bag:

Jeff Schaider, emergency department physician. I think most people back in the day, they think of a doctor's bag as the black bag, where you'd have your hammer, you'd have your stethoscope, you might have your tuning fork. For me, at this point in time, the one thing that I would put in my bag something that would give me the knowledge on how to treat all the different diseases. so I would make certain that I have my iPhone with all my important apps in there so I could pull up information rapidly about patients. In order to actually care for them.

Chris Acob, general medicine physician it's that perspective that you have to give yourself at that critical juncture, which is... Ask yourself that question. If this patient in front of me is my mother or my father, what would you do? 

Ben Mba, hospital medicine physician one would be humility, to make sure that in that bag I have the memories and the lessons from things that I did not get right. and also. The acknowledgement that the same disease, can present in so many different ways. So I would need humility, driven by lessons learned will be in one side of the bag. But I also want awe AWE, The awe that's in the bag is the awe that is driven by the, depth and the capability of the mind and how the mind in reasoning clinically can and self-correct is just phenomenal. 

Jen Smith, general medicine physician: It's a journal of daily gratitudes. The end of the day, write a gratitude. there's many things that we can be grateful for But you have to identify them. And they are sustaining being a clinician of any kind. these days, certainly being a primary care clinician, it takes a lot to sustain. so identifying your daily gratitude, 

David Goldberg, internal medicine physician: Stay curious. There are times where we do this work, and we get tired, and we feel maybe hopeless or ineffective, or even sometimes bad about a mistake we made. I think that if I could open my bag and pull out a sense of curiosity and have it animate me, I would probably be more patient, more forward-looking, more thoughtful. 'Cause there's so much that patients tell us in between the words, and if you're curious, you catch it. I think that also curiosity can drive us to ask other questions, to think, read, learn, consider. So I'll say curiosity 

Toyin Falusi Nwafor, infectious diseases physician: it would be like an advocacy thing. Every time you're navigating as a healthcare provider, as a physician, in my case, you are an advocate for the person. And advocacy means speaking up for the right thing. Advocacy means. Going beyond your job description to get things done. Sometimes advocacy means just sitting with a patient and listening, that ability to listen it's a thing that says your voice matters, which means empowering your patients advocate for themselves. 

Chris Smith, internal medicine physician: The thing that I would pack is the ability to be flexible and to change your mind, Knowing when you're wrong, and to be gracious about that, to me is one of the things that I have tried to teach people. 

Bob Weinstein, infectious diseases physician and chairman, Department of Medicine: I think it's skepticism. Don't believe what you read or hear. Figure out things on your own. I remember once an intern, when we were rounding, I asked what a lab result was, and he said it was negative. And I said, "There's no way that this lab result is gonna be negative or normal," And we pulled up the electronic medical record and the report said, "Expected outcome negative." And then in print underneath that, when you scrolled down, it gave the result that this patient actually had, which was not negative, but very abnormal. So I think you have to have a really healthy dose of skepticism. ​ 

Elizabeth Reidy, former General Counsel, county coping skills. From the employee's perspective, a public hospital's kind of a no-frills environment. There's not a lot of material perks, and you're often required to wear many hats. It's a kind of a combination of grit, resilience, low maintenance, and a willingness to pitch in and work, and I thought that would allow you to thrive in a public hospital setting. You couldn't be a delicate flower and someone who had a lot of expectations and frilly needs. You had to be able to take what you had and make the most of it. 

David Schwartz, former chairman of the Division of Infectious Diseases. A renewed sense of, incredible rewards of compassionate and effective patient care. It's a kind of intimacy that comes from close collaboration with another person, to address problems of such great import and often of urgency. 

Steve Aks, emergency department physician and toxicologist. convening power. You need to pull together the right team and the right experts this has got to include individuals., It has to include public health and government as well. ER doctors, a lot of times I feel like we're Band-Aid doctors. We're really good at putting together problems after they've happened. What I feel was so satisfying in my career was that I've been able to fix systems so we would provide better care to many other people. 

Cathy Deamant, general medicine physician. This is easy for me because in the old Cook County Hospital, there were no chairs and I went to Target, bought a small little folding chair. I carried that chair around the old hospital, kept it in the new hospital. I cannot stress enough the importance of sitting down when talking with patients and families. Brian Lucas Hospital medicine physician: I'm a big proponent of this concept of taking information, prior information, and then trying to figure out the power of the thing you're doing, be it a diagnostic test or whatever. And then coming up with a, posterior probability. that's encapsulated in this Bayes theorem, theoretically I'd bring the Bayes theorem, there's two components of it. Your prior beliefs, and then the strength of the test. Most tests in medicine, they're not that strong. People don't like to hear that, but it's true. Incredibly important in that formula is not the strength of the test. Most important is your so called prior probability. That comes from being a really good doctor. Generating a really solid understanding of how to interpret symptoms physical exam findings, just having the experience of seeing a lot of patients who are coming in with a similar sort of problem. Knowing that, it's not just about ordering a bunch of tests, but it's about being a good clinician at the bedside. That is an important thing that I'd always want to keep In my doctor's bag. 

Mary Driscoll, director of Nursing for the ambulatory clinics I would put compassion and empathy. 

Jay Shannon, pulmonary physician and former CEO one would be wisdom, a lot of times you're stuck having to make a decision with not only imperfect information, but information that couldn't be reconciled. And having the wisdom of Solomon in a situation like that would be a really good thing. Because a lot of times you just made the best decision you could, and some of them were good, and some of them, in retrospect, turned out to be the wrong decision. The second is focus. Once you've determined these are the things you're gonna do, how do you focus on that to get to successful execution? Something else comes up, sorry, I'm not gonna give that any attention today. Just put that aside. That is a, I think, valuable thing for anybody, um, who wants to be effective clinically, who wants to be effective academically, and who wants to be effective as a leader. 

Caryn Stancik, Chief Communications Officer. It is a literal rear view mirror. I don't think we take enough time to celebrate the successes we had. Cook County Health focused on health equity when nobody else was talking about health equity. Things like food and housing insecurity, transportation needs. so, rear view mirror for me. 

Keiki Hinami, general medicine physician and researcher i'm gonna say values it's only in folks who hold certain values that updating of our thinking is possible. To state it conversely, the hearts and minds of people without these values, I think probably can't be changed by numbers. There are several ways to articulate the values that I'm talking about, but my favorite one might be the recognition that human being is the locus of all of our values. And so to turn our backs to the suffering person is to turn away from the very value that requires us to treat human beings as ends unto themselves and never as means to another end. 

Christine Haley. Social worker and Director of Housing If I had a health bag, I would have keys to an apartment for everyone who needed it. I just believe very deeply that housing is a human right . Our homes protect us from the elements. Our homes keep us healthy. All of us should have a safe and affordable place to call home. 

Jack Raba, medical director at Cook County Jail.. You've got to decriminalize substance abuse. We cannot put people in jail just for using drugs, money you save, by not incarcerating. . If you save that money or use that space as a rehab unit or a mental health unit, this world might be a better place. 

Mildred Williamson social worker, and Executive Director of HIV Services. We are now faced with a destruction of things we know that help preserve, if not save people's lives, destruction politically, economically, socially. This requires a movement for the right to be a part of, a respected part of the human family, regardless of your sexual orientation, race or gender expression. It's not just enough to do your best, taking care of the person who's in front of you with their healthcare. We have to do our best. For that person, but we have to do our best to address the conditions that are unjust, unfair, and have been for quite a long time. 

Peter Clarke, internal medicine physician and educator pack your integrity. In any career you go into. You will be. Ethically and morally challenged. And how you meet that challenge is the measure of your success in your career, And so you need that more than anything. I think there's so much at stake that when you go wrong in that realm, there's no turning back. You have just heard hundreds of years of collective wisdom about what mission-oriented healthcare workers would put in their medical bag For those of you about to embark on your career, see how much you can stuff into your medical bag.