Ingram's October 2022

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EMILY HILLMAN University Health

COREY IQBAL Overland Park Regional Medical Center/HCA Midwest Health Corey Iqbal hit a health-care influence two-fer while growing up in St . Louis: His father was an anesthesiologist; his mother was a nurse. Perhaps what sealed the deal on his future came in the form of a severe cut he suffered on his hand, requiring a trip to the emergency room. “One of my earliest childhood memories was sustaining a bad lacera tion to my right ring finger,” Iqbal recalls. “I remember how

The career of an emergency-room physician involves the practice of a different kind of medicine, with a different kind of doctor-patient relationship says Emily Hillman, who calls it “live in a fishbowl.” For one thing, she says, “you don’t always have patient follow-up. I know this may sound strange, but I’ve learned the most from patients that I could not save. My job is to save people on the brink of death, but I can’t always do it, and that part is very hard. So I’ve learned to take what I can from the sickest of the sick and share that with my team.” Hillman didn’t come to ER work complete ly unaware: Her mother also worked in emergency rooms as a nurse. Her father would let her tag along, delivering mom’s lunch or dinner during a 12-hour shift, sometimes

caring the doctors and nurses were in the emergency room. They had such a calming effect on me as a frightened child.” The calming influence of the doctor who stitched him up, combined with his parents’ in fluence, Iqbal says, charted his own path to surgery. His moth er, in fact, had surmised as much watching him tinkering with Legos as a child, and she “always told me I would make a great surgeon someday. She

not having seen her mom for a day or two. Those trips, she said, “made it seem like a nor mal place.” As she grew, her mother nudged her toward medical school, instilling confi dence in her by telling her, “we need doctors like you in this world.” The six-year program at UMKC was her ticket to that world, and when residency op tions came up, “I felt at home with ER, and lucky to be affil iated with University Health,

encouraged me to be creative, step out of my comfort zone, and blaze my own trail. “ That he did, following the six year medical program at UMKC and 10 years of exhaustive training to become a pediatric surgeon. He wouldn’t have cleared any of those hurdles, he says, without the support of his wife, Amber, and now they have three children “who take an active interest in Daddy’s work—making rounds and decorating my office,” he says. “When Daddy misses a baseball game or gymnastics, they know he is helping a sick child. I am lucky to be loved and supported by such great people and want to thank them all.” Iqbal’s life could have turned out very differently had he followed up on a con gressional nomination to the U.S. Naval Academy. A family friend who was a Navy officer synthesized Iqbal’s choice with med school or the academy. “You either want to take lives or save lives,” Iqbal remembers him saying, and “it was very clear to me at that point. I abandoned my pursuit of the military academies, and in 1997 I moved to Kansas City confident in my decision to become a doctor.” He gravitated to pediatrics in part because of volunteer service as a teen, serving youth-oriented causes. “In pediatric surgery, we re fer to it as saving lifetimes,” Iqbal says. “However, it is hard to limit one’s passion for helping children to a single aspect. I think pediatrics attracts people for a number of reasons. I find working with children to be very humbling. Children do not care about titles, certifications, or publications; they just want to feel better so they can go back to being a kid— which is a persistent reminder of why I went into medicine in the first place, to help people.” Helping parents work through the emotional toll of a child on an operating room gurney, and having lived the same experience with his own kids, he says, has shaped his empathy as a provider.

because it has one of the oldest residency programs in the country for that.” She’s often asked why, since she’s such a good communicator, she chose not to go into primary care. “I tell them, ‘If everybody who’s good doesn’t go into emer gency medicine, what kind of world would it be?” Hillman says. “I’ve never felt inconvenienced with patient care here; it was always expected that I would be busy. When I rotat ed to other departments, it felt different. I like emergency work—it’s always there, 24/7, and that sets well with my val ues.” For ER workers, COVID-19 was a bizarre experience, she says—scary at first because of the lack of information and data about what they were dealing with, then strangely beneficial. “In hindsight, the biggest thing I learned through that was the importance of leaning on your community, and those relationships are paramount. Our group of nurses and doctors really came together to support patients and each other, and we came out stronger in the end. At the end of the day, work is work, but the emphasis on people is what’s important.” Another thing she discerned from her pandem ic experience is the increasingly important role of mental health services during a time of unprecedented stress across society. “I’d like to see more support and funding for mental health, support for drug and alcohol addiction,” Hill man says. “Especially in the urban core. I think that’s huge. That, and focusing on systematically breaking down struc tural inequities and racism that affect patient outcomes.”

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October 2022

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