Paving the way for the future
Her team has been highly focused on improving quality and patient safety outcomes while working at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. Thomas Cherry, who started his career at Cook in Critical Care, facilitated the conversation.
Check out the video below to listen to her story and learn more about Dr. Narasimhan’s year, dealing with the changes brought about by COVID-19.
While Dr. Narasimhan acknowledged there is still a lot we do not know yet, there has been a great deal of progress made to better care for patients with COVID-19, along with the relief that she and her team have experienced at having access to the vaccines.
To Dr. Narasimhan, everyone involved in helping patients is a hero—from the nurses caring for their patients, to the janitors making it possible to get in and out of the rooms, and from the suppliers who make and provide products that help save lives to the people who stock the patient’s bedside with PPE each day.
While she and her team have faced a lot of sadness and many challenges during their time working in the intensive care units (ICUs), they have also had their fair share of celebrations. Anytime they extubated somebody, or made it so that they could breathe on their own without the aid of a tube, they would play the Beatles song “Here Comes the Sun” on the loudspeaker of the hospital. Everyone who was at the bedside would clap and cheer for the patient as they experienced this major milestone toward healing. In addition, when someone left the hospital, there was a parade of people helping them leave and cheering them on.
As in many other industries, the pandemic exposed systems and structures that have room for improvement in our hospital administrations. One aspect of responding to the pandemic that Dr. Narasimhan found particularly challenging revolved around clinical trials and getting helpful data published quickly. Enrolling patients in a clinical trial promptly proved difficult due to the paperwork and number of people involved. However, she noted that everyone did the best they could under the circumstances. Dr. Narasimhan is hopeful that the barriers she faced around clinical trials will become less burdensome as a result of their experiences, and that clinical trials will become bigger, better, and faster in the future.
All in all, it is clear that we have all come a long way over the past year. Dr. Narasimhan’s leadership and willingness to share her learnings and experiences during this crisis will continue to pave the way for a future filled with hope in which we all continue to do what we can to improve patient care around the world.
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I really enjoyed listening to this interview, Dr Narasimhan gives us an overview of what they have been going through during this difficult time. Also i like to see how grateful she is for having Cook Medical products to help her patients to get better and recover from this awful disease. Thanks for this uplifting interview and thanks to Thomas for leading a very well done interview.
This entire discussion was enlightening, moving, and inspiring. Thank you, Thomas, for leading the chat and for sharing this with all of the Cook team. More reasons to make me very proud to be a part of this organization.
Thanks Christopher, this event is simply an great example of the incredible relationships our teams posses with world-renown leaders in the fields we serve. Dr. Narasimhan is an inspiration for us all. We should all be proud of the work each of us perform on a daily basis to help support such great leaders!!
Inspiring story from Dr Narasimhan. It helps me to continue to do my best to get our products out there for the patients which our customers treat.