Since Jeff Shamis could not attend the medical session, he prepared the following report and even has some pix.Report of Medical Shadow – Jeff Shamis, 2/28/2007
I spent the day with Dr. Saleem Islam, who’s been in Gainesville all of about 1 month!He was brought to UF&Shands to bring this institution more up-to-date on the current state of the art in Pediatric Surgery, minimimally-invasive surgery. He acquired these skills while undergoing his residency & fellowship studies at U. of Miss., U. of Mass., and U. of Michigan. He stated that it’s not uncommon for academic institutions to be conservative & ‘hold back’ until new technologies gain some traction & (good) experience elsewhere. His wife is also a physician who’ll be starting at UF&Shands soon; they have 3 daughters (one of which wrote him a cute card for Father’s Day, with a note saying something like “why do you spend so much time at work?”.
Like some of the few other pediatric physicians I’ve met (I don’t have kids, after all), he’s very friendly, soft-spoken, & mild-mannered. He has a moderate accent from his upbringing in Pakistan (he was born in NY, but grew up in Pakistan where his parents were from). He feels privileged to have dual citizenship. He does go back to Pakistan frequently, and says it’s not nearly as bad as we might think.
He was attracted to UF&Shands by their reputation and their interest in & need for his skills in this growing specialty (laparoscopic surgery, using what he likes to call chopsticks). He refers to intensive care physicians as Intensivists, a term I’ve never heard before. Gainesville’s climate, schools, & people were also positives for him to come to Gainesville.
He believe it takes a lot of work to provide the right kind of care for kids, and that while Gainesville & UF&Shands are not there yet, there are obvious signs that they’re working towards it. He believes it requires a separate, complete facility which we don’t yet have; currently facilities are spread out not only between Shands/Archer Rd and Shands/AGH, but also within the facilities different services are segregated onto different floors and even different wings; also, some services share space with others (i.e. pediatric & adult care on the same floor).
It turned out to be an unexpectedly quiet day, but we did perform biopsies on a 4-yr old child who was dealing with a case of likely-terminal liver cancer. Her mother wasn’t comfortable allowing me to take pictures. Her poor English no doubt contributed to her feeling pretty intimidated & afraid, on top of the anxiety she had about her daughter.
We also spent some time with another child, a 4-yr old boy suspected of suffering from a ruptured appendix; this is the child in the photos. Despite another serious language barrier, I observed Dr. Islam carefully (&, I believe, effectively) explain to the parents what was going on and what the next steps might be in the boy’s care.
I’ve seen many pictures of NICU’s (neonatal intensive care units), but never had the opportunity to walk through one in real life until today. At least on this day, it was very quiet with subdued lighting, a sort of other-worldly appearance with red or blue lights shining on the infants or glowing through their thin hands. I was told that there had been a pair of twins in there the other day; one had died, but the other survived and had a good prognosis.
Due to the spread-out nature of the facilities (as noted above), we covered a LOT of mileage going back & forth between different areas, especially when we were scheduling & then working through the biopsy procedure. I observed lots of in-the-hall consulting with other physicians, esp. his residents.
Some of you may have read the story in the Gainesville Sun on Feb 16, 2007 about a child undergoing minimally-invasive surgery. Although there were no pictures of the physician, Dr. Islam was the featured doctor. He’s pretty embarrassed about it, and is quite pleased that his picture didn’t make it into the story. In case you don’t know, this new approach to surgery, which seems to be gaining ground in all types of surgery, allows laparoscopic procedures to perform surgery through small incisions in the skin, allowing for minimal trauma to the body and extremely fast recovery (i.e., the child with the ruptured appendix could be back in school within 1-2 days of his appendectomy).
He seems to be a great asset to our community; my concern is that if UF&Shands and Tallahassee don’t make the requisite commitments to this aspect of health care that we could lose him.
Jeff Shamis
ps: the photo with Dr. Islam’s name spelled out in ‘blocks’ was given to him after one of his training programs by his fellow students & faculty, and appears to be comprised of images & items from his work environment, i.e. various instruments, tiny hands, etc.
