Paul Nordmann
Dr. Alejandra D. Alvarez Wilson
OBSTETRICS & GYNECOLOGY / SSM HEALTH MEDICAL GROUP, SSM HEALTH ST. CLARE HOSPITAL–FENTON
As an OBGYN, Alvarez Wilson has experienced some of life’s extreme highs and lows. “During the pandemic, we weren’t able to do the fun, normal things that patients enjoy doing when they’re pregnant, like bringing their grandma to the anatomy ultrasound,” she says. At the same time, Alvarez Wilson and her patients have experienced other profound challenges. She sometimes shares her own story with patients: After enduring a miscarriage, Alvarez Wilson was told that she shouldn’t carry any more pregnancies. “I was beside myself,” she says. “Trying to come back to work after something like that happens to you and then having to care for and lay hands on other people’s bellies, and your belly is no longer there… It was so hard.” Alvarez Wilson’s sister then offered to carry a baby for her, and a close friend offered to do the same. As a result, she now has a son and a daughter who are just eight months apart. Today, Alvarez Wilson deeply empathizes with her patients, she says: “For every joy they have when they’re finally pregnant to every loss that they’ve had, I feel all of that with them.”
Paul Nordmann
Dr. Henry B. Randall
SURGERY / SLUCARE PHYSICIAN GROUP, SSM HEALTH SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL
Randall was 4 years old when he declared that one day, he’d become a doctor. He now suspects he got the idea from TV. Whatever the source, he developed a real love for science and animals that led to a career as a surgeon. Today, Randall specializes in liver, kidney, and pancreas surgery and transplantation, and he’s a professor at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. Though living donor transplants were put on pause for about a month, Randall performed imperative surgeries, such as liver transplants throughout the pandemic. Looking ahead, Randall says health care providers should embrace the next era of technology: artificial intelligence. He’s trying to spread the message to other caregivers to understand AI and how to implement it to change everyday work and patient experience. “We’re on the precipice of an industrial revolution here with all things AI,” he says. “It behooves people to understand the science, which is really about mathematics, engineering, and applying algorithms to assess and analyze data. Using AI for decision support—that’s going to be the big thing in the future.”
PAUL NORDMANN
Dr. Rimki Rana
FAMILY MEDICINE / SSM HEALTH MEDICAL GROUP, SSM HEALTH ST. JOSEPH HOSPITAL–ST. CHARLES
Rana finds joy in watching her patients grow. That’s why, she says, you really have to love people if you want to practice medicine. She enjoys learning about each patient’s home life, personality, and family. “All of that is pertinent, because I firmly believe that there’s a psychosocial element that determines the outcome of every chronic condition,” she says. Rana offers diabetes management as an example. The pandemic forced her to often ask for this background information through virtual appointments, though technology has also complicated her work. “I’ve been learning to deal with the spread of misinformation, talking to patients and reassuring them,” she says. “This battle of social media versus accurate scientific information is real and something we deal with on a daily basis.”
Paul Nordmann
Dr. Pablo Daniel Dayer
NEPHROLOGY / ST. LUKE’S HOSPITAL, DEPARTMENT OF NEPHROLOGY
Growing up in Argentina, Dayer wanted to be a dentist—until he realized it’s hard to be social with patients when you’re operating on their mouths. After moving to the States, he chose to study nephrology for its intellectual challenges and the opportunity to care for patients for long periods of time. He often gets to know patients well, from family members to pet names. The pandemic brought difficult moments as he continued to see patients with chronic conditions, as well as COVID-19 patients who developed kidney disease. “That was a horrific experience. Patients who develop renal failure due to COVID had a very high mortality—over 90 percent of those patients died,” he recalls. “It was very hard to know that we couldn’t help those patients. That was probably the worst part of my career.” The pandemic also changed how he’ll interact with people in the future. “Never leave your patients alone,” he says. “Make sure they know that you’re available and that you can come back and put on that gown as many times as they need.”
Paul Nordmann
Dr. Amana Nasir
PEDIATRIC GASTROENTEROLOGY / MERCY CLINIC KIDS GI, MERCY HOSPITAL–ST. LOUIS
Pediatrics is like having thousands of children, Nasir says with a laugh: “We have more pictures of patients in the office than of our own children.” This mentality is why young patients have noted Nasir’s ability to clearly explain complicated diagnoses and terms with compassion. Each day, Nasir is amazed by young children’s continued resilience through gastrointestinal issues and even attended one patient’s dance recital. During the pandemic, she saw more children experience belly aches and GI manifestations of anxiety—and manifold the amount of foreign body ingestions, such as toys and barrettes. She also recalls one family that lived in Illinois but needed to adhere to insurance and be in Missouri to receive an initial visit. Nasir met them in their camper at a rest stop in Missouri. “We make it work,” she says. “During the pandemic, humanity came out, I feel… It just made us people trying to help each other in any way.”
Paul Nordmann
Dr. Anthony Sonn
CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE / MERCY CLINIC HEART & VASCULAR, MERCY HOSPITAL–ST. LOUIS
As a child, Sonn promised his grandfather that he’d become a physician. After studying at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, Sonn thought he wanted to be an anesthesiologist but switched his focus to internal medicine with the hopes of pursuing cardiology. He felt he wouldn’t be able to build long-term relationships with his patients as an anesthesiologist. Now Sonn is handling all things cardiovascular-related. Despite the pandemic, he and his colleagues were quite busy this past year. They pivoted to telehealth, which has provided a convenient alternative to in-person care, particularly for seniors, he notes. For Sonn, the pandemic also emphasized how patients’ support network can affect their well-being. “Family is so important,” he says. “During the trying time, I realized that my patients who had a lot of family members, a lot of support, seemed to do better than those who were by themselves.”
Paul Nordmann
Dr. Angela L. Brown
INTERNAL MEDICINE / WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY PHYSICIANS, BARNES-JEWISH HOSPITAL, CENTER FOR ADVANCED MEDICINE
This year marks Brown’s 26th year as a faculty member at Washington University. The nice thing about internal medicine, she says, is that she’s been able to develop long-term relationships with her patients—more than 20 years with some—and has even attended some of their weddings, birthdays, and funerals. During the pandemic, she had to be flexible and embrace a form of care that she wasn’t as familiar with: telemedicine. It’s a lesson that she’s taking with her. “We’re going to have to keep adapting. We need to look at our access to care and get resources to people where they are,” she says. “We also need to look now at how to shift resources to take care of folks who have mental health issues from this [pandemic] and long COVID symptoms.”
Paul Nordmann
Dr. Maleewan Kitcharoensakkul
ALLERGY & IMMUNOLOGY / WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY PHYSICIANS, ST. LOUIS CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
Kitcharoensakkul became interested in medicine as a teenager, after a car accident landed her and her sister in the emergency room. She already had an interest in biology and science but watching how doctors and nurses helped patients helped solidify her passion for the health care field. She later chose pediatrics because she wanted to focus on early intervention and health promotion. Like many doctors, Kitcharoensakkul was forced to change how she spoke with patients during the pandemic. “I learned to be a better listener. Being a doctor, having great communication skills is a critical, essential skill,” she says. “To treat patients effectively, we have to understand them and their environment—and get used to a great deal of uncertainty.”
Paul Nordmann
Dr. Randall S. Sterkel
PEDIATRICS / ESSE HEALTH, ST. LOUIS CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL, MERCY HOSPITAL–ST. LOUIS
Sterkel, who was raised by a single father who practiced internal medicine, recalls his dad at one time discouraging him from pursuing pediatrics. “He said, ‘Well, you know, Randall, when kids get sick, it’s a different thing altogether than when adults get sick,’” recalls Sterkel. “‘It’s harder emotionally.’” But Sterkel’s father watched children suffer from measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, and other infections that have since been largely controlled or eradicated by vaccinations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sterkel notes, illness severity from COVID-19 has been generally less severe in kids, though they were impacted greatly in many other ways. Now, once the vaccines are proven safe and effective for children, he’s looking forward to seeing every one of his patients become immune to COVID-19. “When there is need in the pediatric population, we have a really good group of pediatricians here in the community who work together and try to address those needs,” he says. “This community raised me. This community raised my kids, too, so giving my energy to help families raise kids here is really meaningful to me.”
Paul Nordmann
Dr. Cheryl A. Faber
NEUROLOGY / BJC MEDICAL GROUP, MISSOURI BAPTIST MEDICAL CENTER, NEUROLOGY ASSOCIATES
Faber normally sees a lot of stroke patients, but there were fewer beds for stroke patients during the pandemic, and many patients weren’t coming in because they feared contracting the virus at the hospital. Now, she’s seeing the consequences. She recalls an interaction with a recent patient who had a stroke during the pandemic and didn’t get adequate care because the patient was afraid to visit a rehabilitation center and many were not in operation. “If someone thinks they’re having a stroke, they should not wait,” Faber says. Though the patient didn’t receive care early enough, Faber says she will recover. It’s a lesson that she’s taking with her: “There probably will be another pandemic, and we all should be thinking about how we might want to restructure our lives with that in mind.”
