Ingram's October 2022

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TALAL KHAN The University of Kansas Hospital

BECKY LOWRY The University of Kansas Hospital

It should come as no surprise that the path to medical school is much easier to navigate than the path to space. For Talal Khan, the commitment to a medical career took root early—”maybe late elementary to early middle school; I never really considered viable alternatives,” he says. “I did at one point want to be an astronaut and maybe combine my interest in medicine and being an astronaut; however, at the time I did not see a clear path to that.” Thus did this native of Pakistan begin a journey that would bring him to anesthesia as a specialty and to Kansas City as a practitioner. He goes well beyond those duties as department chair for anesthe siology at KU’s School of Medicine, sits on the board of di rectors for the hospital’s health system, and is president of

A college degree, a medical degree, years of hospital ro tations, fellowships, and residencies. After all that, it’s not in one’s nature to answer a question with “I don’t know.” The ability to admit that—and then to pivot into a solutions mode— just might be health care’s silver lining from the pandemic that has ravaged the world for 2½ years, says Becky Lowry. An internal medicine specialist for The University of Kansas

Hospital, Lowry looks back on her organization’s experience and proudly declares that a number of lessons have been learned. “We have learned we can do things that we didn’t think possible,” she says. “We have learned better how to say ‘I don’t know,’ which can be hard but is important to ac knowledge. We have learned how to adapt more quickly to rapidly changing information than we thought possible. We

The University of Kansas Phy sicians group. The early appeal of health care formed while watching the care his father received for a chronic illness. “That first-hand witness to medical expertise and empa thy helped form my early goals to a career focused on service and utilizing the latest advanc es to improve lives,” Khan says. Anesthesiology, periop erative and pain-management medicine presented exciting

also, I genuinely believe, have learned how important it is to take care of ourselves and our medical community.” Lowry is a native of southwest Kansas, the daughter of a farmer and a registered nurse. “My parents and grandparents modeled for my sister and me compassion, hard work, and dedication and really encouraged finding meaningful careers that provided a service to others,” she says. “They were deeply committed to caring for others in their lives.” She carried that forward first as a physical therapy and medical assistant in high school and college and planned a PT track. Then she discovered the challenge and complexity of medical decision-making and developing care plans. That took her to KU’s school of med icine and then internal medicine after a brief consideration of pediatrics. “While I loved both, I found that in IM, I could have the privilege of walking through health journeys with patients and families for decades and through that time could work through many complex clinical situations,” Lowry says. She leveraged a background in both fields to become med ical director for the Survivorship Transition Clinic with the hospital’s cancer center. Her leadership role has also height ened her awareness of how care isn’t just a consideration for patients. “In medicine, we have to care for our health-care workers,” she says. “We must create professional workflows and structures that support the well-being of the health care team members. Physicians and health-care workers are hu mans. We are strong. We are resilient. We are dedicated to the calling of serving our patients. We know from data and experience that we do this best when we are healthy and well ourselves.” The pandemic, she says, “demonstrated the in credible strength of physicians and health-care workers and also forced us to acknowledge we have limitations and our systems have opportunities.”

and dynamic possibilities. “Anesthesiologists manage myr iad considerations to optimize the patient from the medical standpoints to help achieve excellent outcomes,” Khan says. “We use the latest technological advances in monitoring and intraoperative imaging with ultrasound or echocardiog raphy to make second-to-second decisions to positively im pact the surgical outcome.” He’s particularly excited about pain medicine, a field that has seen huge advances over the past 20 years. “Pain is one of the most common symptoms that drive a patient to seek medical care,” he says. “Chronic pain is a huge public-health concern resulting in significant disruption to quality of life and ability to function.” Through out his career, the learning has never stopped—especially in the pandemic era. “This particular crisis of a lifetime pro vided many learning opportunities,” he says. “I have learned to approach life and nature with an even greater degree of humility, recognize the humanity in others, think about investing more time and effort in thinking about and pre paring for the next health-care crisis, support our teams in medicine that have been on the forefront of this relentless adversary, and try to harness everyone’s creative ideas to provide outstanding care in the face of great challenges.” Khan thinks deeply about the myriad challenges to better population health, and says that one way to elevate care broadly would be with “more focus on preventive care, pub lic health, and education,” he says.

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October 2022

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