Dr. David Zorko: Ensuring Children Are Surviving and Thriving

For critically ill children, survival is just the beginning of their story and post-PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) care is the cornerstone of ensuring children thrive afterwards. Dr. David Zorko’s research places a magnifying glass on post-PICU care, aiming to better understand this type of care, identify the types of children who are at higher risk, and generate evidence-based practices to better support children and their families.

Dr. David Zorko’s role as researcher also helps him become a stronger paediatric critical care physician, as his eye for the long-term effects impacts the decisions he makes in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit).

For the first time on Healthcare Change Makers, our interviewee becomes the interviewer on a special second part of the episode! For the longest time, we’ve wanted to give our guests an opportunity to spotlight key people in their network.

Dr. David Zorko interviews two of his mentors, Dr. Geneviève Du Pont-Thibodeau and Dr. Karen Choong, who share a collective goal of researching post-PICU care. With their combined expertise, they explain why research about this type of care is critical and share advice for hospitals on improving post-PICU care. And it’s a true indication of how healthcare is a team sport.

Quotables:

“I’m really passionate about improving outcomes for children and families who survive critical illness, and my research focuses on their long-term outcome.” - DZ

“The dyad of a child and their caregivers and family are inseparable and codependent so consequently family members can also experience adverse outcomes related to their children’s critical illness. Then that can impact further upon the child.” - DZ

“What interventions and practices can we implement to not just help children survive, but survive better.” - DZ

“My inspiration comes from the patients and their families. Some are surviving and thriving after their critical illness and some are not. And some have such serious chronic health problems that they require long ICU stays or repeated ICU admissions, and many of these survivors are becoming our future patients.” - DZ

“There are over 4,000 Tim Hortons stores in Canada and less than 20 PICUs in Canada. You can imagine everyone kind of knows everyone in the Pediatric Critical Care world in Canada, and if you want to get any type of large-scale research done, we all need to partner together.” - DZ

“I like to use that Ted Lasso phrase, be curious not judgemental.” - DZ

“If you saw me in the ICU, what you’ll hear me say to families when their child is critically ill is despite how scary this all is…that doesn’t change the fact that you are still their parents. All the mom and dad things apply. And if you want to do something that your child would like, don’t let these things be barriers, let us make it happen.” - DZ

“There’s consistent evidence that the top predictor for reducing many of these ICU consequences is family presence, so empowering and engaging them is fundamental.” – DZ

“There’s been so much improvement in the way that we help kids survive critical care and critical disease, that now I think our priority has shifted in terms of making sure that not only they survive but they survive with a good quality of life.” - GDT

“We’ve evolved the model and come to understand that critical illness is a continuum of care, and it doesn’t just start in the ICU. In fact, it starts before the ICU and therefore should continue after the ICU.” – KC

Mentioned in this Episode:

·       McMaster Children’s Hospital

·       McMaster University

·       The Canadian Critical Care Trials Group

·       Dr. Geneviève Du Pont-Thibodeau

·       Dr. Karen Choong

·       Ted Lasso TV Show

·       The Pitt TV Show

·       ER TV Show

·       Noah Wyle

·       Dr. Jacques Lacroix

·       Dr. Margaret Herridge

·       Dr. Deborah Cook

Access More Interviews with Healthcare Leaders at HIROC.com/podcast

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