In My Words: Meet the Leads – Dr. Catherine Diskin, Paediatrician | Complex Care

Narration:

From SickKids Fellow, to Education Co-Lead and Medical Co-Lead of Project ECHO Complex Care, Dr. Catherine Diskin’s professional journey speaks to ECHO’s formative strengths at all stages of medical learning – from foundational entry points, to those of medical experts.

Dr. Catherine Diskin:

Complex care, caring for children with medical complexity, it’s kind of this unique spot where you get to care for children over a long period of time and you get to really know them. And relationships are really important. You generally aren’t a solo practitioner, and so I work with nurse practitioners, social workers and occupational therapists every day of the week.

And you also spend a lot of your time figuring out things with families.

And so complex care has that kind of unique melting pot of, you know, collaboration, shared decision making in an interprofessional environment.

Project Echo was actually formative in my own training. You know, the original and ECHO sessions on competencies. The idea of like listening to somebody provide a didactic and then have case discussions and see how the professional team could
and could work in a teaching environment to in ways that was like applicable to care was actually really important.

And so like Echo was a non-negotiable part of my, my fellowship when I became faculty of SickKids and U of T, I took on to be the medical lead because my area outside of children with medical complexity, my area of academic focus is education.

And so now I look on Project Echo, as always, an opportunity for learning.

There isn’t an ECHO Session that goes by when I don’t pick up some nugget that I can apply to my clinical practice that day or the next, but also as a way of building a community of practice.

And so what I think is phenomenal about ECHO is that you have a group of individuals
who work literally all over maybe North America, but oftentimes further afield, and they come to both learn but also share their own experience.

And I think that that’s the piece that’s really exciting for ECHO is, is that it’s a model through which people can develop their own expertise, but also develop connections
with other professionals caring for a similar population of children. And I think that that community of practice translates into an opportunity for support, which presenters are oftentimes surprised by.

But again, I guess it comes back to the point that, people are eager to share their stories, but also eager toto be part of a supportive community. A community of practice is never static, either in its knowledge, its members, or even for who’s part of it, where they are in their learning of children with medical complexity.

Something that I didn’t appreciate about Echo is that like it can address the learning needs of everyone from novice for new to complex care, right through to established experts. We’re motivated to provide sessions that are relevant to us and to our colleagues.

And so in general, the topics are, you know, like just last week it was about feeding assessment in children with medical complexity, something that crops up week in, week out, in the care of children with disability and medical complexity. It’s not about, you know, remote or, you know, theories of practice. It’s actually about what matters in clinical practice, what are that knowledge and skills that we need as health care providers to be able to care for children with medical complexity.

So I think that’s one of the things that, you know, gets people through the Zoom door to join us. But also it’s why like it’s why I go.

And I think we’re definitely seeing where we’ve had speakers come and join us and people make relationships or make connections or I go to follow up with youafter this session and just last week,and I don’t know if this is answering your question,our occupational therapist for sharing. Well, we have a, you know, a practice guide or something similar. And now the chat was like, oh, I’d like to see it and oh, I’d like to see it.

And I think what it often times does is that it links people in a way so and I think that a lot of those connections don’t ultimately go through meas one of the leads, but actually people are able to make connections themselves.

Have I made connections? Yeah, absolutely.

As a clinician teacher family, there is no one more invested in the health care professional being the best that they can be than families and patients.

I think families can add a different perspective and it can enhance learning for health care professionals. I think we have to do it in a very deliberate way.

What would families like to add? How would they see themselves adding?

And then how do we make sure that we create a safe environment for families participating and retain what I hope is a safe environment for clinicians?

And you mentioned C6 (Conversations with Families to Advance the Clinical Care of Children with Medical Complexities and Disabilities) which was a seminar series which we co-led with families, supported by the ECHO team. You know, one of the key pieces is,is that preparation like actually, you know, true preparation of both ourselves as clinicians and families and very deliberatecommunication and very deliberate about what are we asking?

How do we go about this intentional communication about what’s involved and creating, shared understanding is actually probably what we have to do.

So baby steps, but very deliberate steps.