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Dr. Kenjarski - Optimizing Case Scheduling for All Stakeholders
230 Plays2 years ago
Dr. Tom Kenjarski is the Founder & Managing Partner of Noble Anesthesia Partners, and we are so excited to sit down with him as he is the first anesthesiologist we’ve had on the show! On today's episode, our host Nick Latz is chatting with Dr. Kenjarski about the current state of anesthesiology in the ASC industry and how surgery centers can optimize case scheduling for all stakeholders, which includes your anesthesia partners.
In our news recap, we’ll cover virtual nurses, the demand for anesthesia providers, ASCA’s ASC Administrator Development Program, and of course, end the news segment with a positive story about a nurse who is using her artistic skills to help her peers reduce job-related anxiety.
Articles Mentioned:
Trinity Health examines in-hospital virtual care model
ASCA's ASC Administrator Development Program
Nurse Uses Creativity to Help Peers Reduce Job-Related Anxiety
Brought to you by HST Pathways.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to This Week in Surgery Centers
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to This Week in Surgery Centers. If you're in the ASC industry, then you're in the right place. Every week, we'll start the episode off by sharing an interesting conversation we had with our featured guests, and then we'll close the episode by recapping the latest news impacting surgery centers. We're excited to share with you what we have, so let's get started and see what the industry's been up to.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi,
Interview with Dr. Tom Kenjarski
00:00:28
Speaker
everyone. Here's what you can expect on today's episode. Dr. Tom Kenjarski is the founder and managing partner of Noble Anesthesia Partners, and he is also the first anesthesiologist we've had on the podcast, which is exciting. And on today's episode, our host, Nick Latz, is chatting with Dr. Kenjarski about how surgery centers can optimize case scheduling for all stakeholders, which, of course, includes your anesthesia partners.
00:00:57
Speaker
In our news recap, we'll cover virtual nurses, the demand for anesthesia providers, ASCA's ASC Administrator Development Program, and of course, end the news segment with a positive story about a nurse who is using her artistic skills to help her peers reduce job-related anxiety. Hope everyone enjoys the episode and here's what's going on this week in Surgery Centers.
00:01:27
Speaker
Dr. Kinjarski, welcome to the show. Thank you, thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us today. And you're our first anesthesiologist on the podcast. I'm excited to have you on. And before we dig in, I was hoping, Dr. Kinjarski, you could tell me a little bit about yourself and your professional background. Sure, sure. I was raised in Buffalo, New York, went to college and medical school at the University of Rochester.
00:01:54
Speaker
Moved down to Texas in 1998 for residency at UT Southwestern and never left. After training, worked for two different groups as an employed anesthesiologist and then started my own group, Noble Anesthesia Partners, back in October of 2011. Since that time, I brought practice management or business operations in house in 2014 and had the opportunity to acquire
00:02:25
Speaker
Another practice management company that takes care of any type of office-based physician, you might go see primary care doctors, surgeons, or specialists. And then from there, just grew the anesthesia group. You know, we've been practicing in Dallas, and very soon after, moved over to our neighboring town, Fort Worth, have a very heavy presence there.
00:02:47
Speaker
We've been in Houston, Texas for over eight years, El Paso, Texas for over two, and then just started Corpus Christi, Texas last month. Along with that, as we were growing, we entered into a partnership with Ambulatory Management Solutions out of Chicago, Illinois at the end of 2021.
00:03:10
Speaker
So they've given us a lot of insight on how to be able to grow the practice and also to add another service line to our anesthesia group, namely office-based anesthesia. Thanks for sharing that. And I did want to ask a couple of questions about your anesthesia group.
Noble Anesthesia Partners' Focus and Challenges
00:03:31
Speaker
Noble anesthesia partners. And one of the things that makes you unique and you touched on the relationship with ambulatory management solutions, but I understand you guys are 100% focused on the ASC market from a client perspective. Is that right?
00:03:48
Speaker
just about. We're focused on ambulatory anesthesia. So we work in ambulatory surgery centers like you mentioned, but also acute care surgical hospitals, smaller community hospitals with an outpatient focus. And then as I mentioned with AMS, we have entered into office-based anesthesia over the course of the last year in both the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston markets. So
00:04:14
Speaker
We will go to any centers, but primarily our focus is on ambulatory anesthesia services, outpatient anesthesia. Gotcha. And how did you decide to focus on those segments of the market and specifically kind of the outpatient side? Oh, it kind of chose us.
00:04:37
Speaker
level one tertiary care trauma center market is highly saturated. Those are the contracts that a lot of the national groups compete for primarily because there is a stipend or a revenue guarantee associated with them.
00:04:52
Speaker
And what we found is in ambulatory centers, such as the acute care surgical hospitals, surgery centers, of course, surgeon's offices, there's no stipend to be had. So we found a lot of the larger groups were neglecting those outpatient centers. They were sending people there who were post call because they could offer them the shortest days in order to get back home to their families. They were sending providers, especially in rural communities that didn't have the same level of training in regional anesthesia
00:05:21
Speaker
that our providers did. So having focused on that, we developed our brand and Word got out that, wow, this is a totally different approach to ambulatory anesthesia. And Noble became a known entity and then became recommended between facility administrators and then the larger surgery center organizations like USPI and SCA. Fantastic.
00:05:48
Speaker
And focusing on those segments, the ASC segments and just your business in general, one of the things that comes up a lot these days is staffing. Staffing at the ASC level, staffing from an anesthesiologist perspective. How is that impacting your business and what are you seeing specifically at Noble?
00:06:08
Speaker
Oh, the market is crazy right now for providers. And again, these these kind of go hand in hand, the larger centers, the tertiary care centers, level one centers, because they usually have entered into contracts with the groups that have some type of revenue guarantee or stipend.
00:06:28
Speaker
you know, absorb those costs when either the market is going up for employed anesthesiologists or they have to resort towards a local tenants coverage. So in those situations, yes, the anesthesia group is having to pay more in order to recruit the providers they need.
00:06:47
Speaker
But they're able to pass those costs on for the most part to those larger centers and then subsequently the local, state, and federal governments. And, you know, that's our, you know, that's you and me. So when you have a practice like Noble Anesthesia Partners, which is totally dependent on the revenue generated from the anesthesia services at those ASCs and acute care surgical hospitals,
00:07:15
Speaker
your hands are really tied. There is only so much that you can offer those providers because a lot of times those centers aren't interested in paying any type of stipend or financial support whatsoever. So the market has kind of been really crazy for all anesthesia groups, but specifically for us, it's been a lot harder because we don't have that blank check to write. So that's presented quite a challenge for us.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah. And on that front, are you doing anything different from a recruiting perspective or from a coverage model perspective? How are you thinking about changing the business model accordingly? Well, that's a great question.
Optimizing Staffing and Case Scheduling
00:08:06
Speaker
We have tried to work collaboratively with those centers in order to explain to them the financial constraints that we're under and how the way that they schedule cases really affects the way that we're able to staff them. If they want to have X number of rooms worth of cases, but in each of those rooms, they don't book enough cases in order for us to cover the cost of a provider,
00:08:37
Speaker
You know, that becomes a challenge, especially for some centers which are just getting started and all centers are really interested in taking care of the surgeons and patients and just accepting the case whenever the surgeon wants to post it, whatever time they want to post it. For us, we've had to educate them about, you know, if you are able to stack the cases in one room, have a surgeon have a morning block and another one in an afternoon block, or instead of a surgeon booking
00:08:55
Speaker
We're losing money. We're subsidizing that center for the day.
00:09:03
Speaker
three cases on three different days saying, hey, is there any chance that the surgeon could do all three of those on the same day? Boy, that would really help us. Those are the types of things that we've had to do in order to make sure that we can continue to find and pay for the types of providers that are necessary for those types of facilities. There's a higher customer service factor in those types of facilities because a lot of them are open staff.
00:09:31
Speaker
and you're only as good as your last case. So you really have to do your best as the owner of an anesthesia group to find kind of the best and the brightest. And then people who are not necessarily focused on shift work. We don't hire providers from seven to three, seven to seven or whatever. So it's different.
00:09:51
Speaker
In general, we accentuate the fact that it is a lifestyle practice. When you're in ASC, they close for the day and then they don't open until the next morning. So there's no bringbacks, there's no call. Elective cases on the weekends are just that and usually are done by mutual agreement with us. So our biggest selling point is the fact that they're not going to be taking in-house overnight call. They're not going to be working on weekends. And if they
00:10:16
Speaker
do offer to do that they are going to be rewarded on top of whatever their base compensation package is. Sure.
00:10:22
Speaker
And you touched on something there that I think is pretty interesting, which is the staffing challenges forcing more conversations and collaborations with the ASEs on scheduling and stacking. And how do you get more efficient with the case volumes and the case mix and the times? Yes. How collaborative are your customers with you on those requests and those needs?
00:10:50
Speaker
Boy, is that a loaded question. I would say at first blush, not very collaborative. But I've always felt that the most important question anybody could ask is why. For the first time in at least my memory, I am hearing that
00:11:08
Speaker
Anesthesia groups are asking for subsidies from ambulatory surgery centers in order to support their staffing costs. They're also refusing cases. They're having trouble finding coverage or whatever. And as an administrator, I would think the most important question to ask is why. So what we're finding is, as
00:11:32
Speaker
ASCs are becoming more sophisticated and able to draw higher acuity cases from the hospitals. For example, we're now doing total joint replacements on an outpatient basis. As you're moving those cases from the larger centers into an ASC, the demographic changes as well.
00:11:51
Speaker
You do have a higher incidence of governmental payers who require those higher acuity services. So we've tried to explain that saying, hey, this might be a financial boon for you as an ASC because you get to do a bigger case. But we don't share that same benefit. Our Medicare rate is the same no matter if we do that case at a hospital or an ASC or anywhere else. So again,
00:12:17
Speaker
I think that we have tried and we have been fairly successful with our administrators just saying, here's the challenges we're facing. We've shown them our data to say, hey, this might look like a great day, but based on the number of cases and what they are and whatever the payer mix is for those patients that day, we're not covering the cost of our provider.
00:12:41
Speaker
And in the past, we've had centers come up to us and say, well, we've always had two anesthesiologists. And I was like, your case volume and demographics won't cover the case of just two CRNAs. So again, it becomes a discussion. But I think the most important question that they could ask, having seen these staffing challenges or requests for stipends or other things, is to ask why and to enter into discussion with the anesthesia group.
00:13:08
Speaker
And we have no trouble being forthcoming with those types of data points for them, showing them that what might be a great day for them and a great day for the surgeon is actually going to be operating at a loss for their anesthesia provider. Yeah, it's super interesting, right? Because in the long term, the business model has to make sense for all stakeholders, right? So to your point on the more acute cases,
00:13:33
Speaker
and maybe the increased case profitability from those cases. It seems like there's some interesting. It doesn't translate to anesthesia services. There's some interesting conversations there on how you potentially spread the economics. Do you foresee any kind of major changes to anesthesia care if you're putting on your five-year hat and lens, looking in the future?
00:13:56
Speaker
Well, I do. And, you know, again, you're asking some great questions. You know, when I started and I've reached that age where I can say fun things like, you know, I've been in practice for over 20 years or my anesthesia group has been in practice for over a decade. I mean, that's really cool. But 20 years ago, when I when I was starting my career down at a level one center in Dallas, Texas, that was kind of the
00:14:25
Speaker
Fertile Crescent for a lot of different things, including one now international surgery center company. And they were building a location on the campus of that center. And I remember being in the doctor's lounge and the surgeons were having a discussion along the lines of, gosh, who would want to have their gallbladder out and go home the same day?
00:14:45
Speaker
The answer is everybody. And it's troubling that they didn't foresee that, that, hey, the technology was getting to a certain point where not only could we have the equipment, but we had advances in anesthesia and regional anesthesia to the point where, yeah, you can do those cases at an outpatient facility and send those appropriately screened patients home within an hour or so of their surgery.
00:15:08
Speaker
I see that trend continuing as it is really booming right now from taking higher acuity cases from hospitals to ambulatory surgery centers for the next move to be from ambulatory surgery centers to appropriate surgeon's offices. Interesting. I really see that happening and we've seen some evidence at least from the governmental payers with pain management physicians where
00:15:30
Speaker
They're being guided to do a certain percent of, say, epidural steroid injections in their office. They don't want them taking all those patients, especially the ones who don't need to be there, to generate a facility fee and an ASC just for an epidural steroid injection. So I think that the patients certainly would appreciate that. I know that the payers are certainly trying to direct it there.
00:15:52
Speaker
I know a lot of surgeons have been proactive about this, and I really see that as the next trend. And this is coming from the guy with Noble Anesthesia Partners. I mean, we've done outpatient craniotomies, same day brain surgery. And again, not all of those cases have to be done at a level one center. We're doing, like I said,
00:16:17
Speaker
total joint replacements and other types of bigger cases, stable bariatric procedures and sending those patients home the same day. So again, you have to look at what the current cases are in the ASC and say how many of them could be done in appropriately equipped and staffed surgeon's office. That makes sense for that shift to continue. Yeah.
00:16:38
Speaker
I want to go back and talk about one of the things that you touched on earlier, which is scheduling. And you talked about kind of the need or opportunity for different scheduling mixes to become more efficient to help with the staffing issues. Are there any best practices that you guys have seen at your practice or with your clients around tools and process around scheduling? Because it seems like
00:17:06
Speaker
Flexibility in communication is becoming even more important for the ASC to be able to communicate with all stakeholders around scheduling and flexibility and taking input. Have you seen any good tools or best practices that have helped you guys in that communication?
00:17:26
Speaker
Yes. And, um, unfortunately I think that those are kind of, uh, falling into the category of the difficult discussions that they want to have. The surgery centers want to be accommodating. They, they like, especially if they, um, are just opening or trying to establish business or have expanded recently or whatever, they, they really want to be able to let the surgeon to more than likely our surgeon investors in the facility do any case they want any day of the week at any time. And, um,
00:17:56
Speaker
I would love, in a perfect world, to be able to accommodate all of that. But I don't think that, A, they know how anesthesia is reimbursed. And I think that we've had discussions with administrators and some surgeons just saying, hey, look, I want to show you.
00:18:18
Speaker
why we're asking you to either stock cases or for you to pick an afternoon block in front of some others or whatever so that we can generate or enough revenue to have the appropriate amount of providers that you want at that facility that day. But the other thing is I think that there's certainly a discussion to be had between the administrators and the surgeons and especially surgeon investors saying, hey, look, when you book one case on a day where we're not doing anything else, we have to bring in this many staff members.
00:18:47
Speaker
We have to turn the lights on. We have to generate all of these other things. And then anesthesia has to come out here and they're doing it a lost leader.
00:18:57
Speaker
over time, you know, annualized or whatever, saying, if we had done these types of things, we would have generated another million dollars of IBITDA for the center had we not booked cases like that. And we're just starting to see the administrators sitting down at their meetings and start having those discussions, saying that, hey, look, you know, just because you can doesn't mean you should.
00:19:22
Speaker
And if we were to do this, your distribution checks as a physician investor would have each increased by X. Those are usually eye-popping numbers. Those are usually things that I think would motivate everybody. But again, to your point, it requires a discussion. It requires some collaboration. The other thing is recognizing some things that are kind of inherent that people don't think about.
00:19:46
Speaker
You know, the surgery center cases should be done earlier in the day. Most of those centers hire people for their, you know, seven to five shifts or, you know, the anesthesia provider certainly expect to be kind of working during day hours or whatever. You know, the surgeon should always keep that in mind and the facilitator or administrator should be keeping that in mind when they accept those cases as well. Surgery center cases should be done at the beginning of the day.
00:20:09
Speaker
The other cases that they need to do at the hospital, those, again, are either stipend or revenue guaranteed contracts with the other anesthesia group. They have second shifts. They have another crew that's working 3 to 11s or 7P to 7A or whatever. They have those providers in place and they're there in order to take on those later cases.
00:20:30
Speaker
So the timing of the day in which, when do I do my surgery center block? Whereas when do I go do my one or two inpatient cases to follow is huge. Some of the cases at the hospitals are bigger and run over, and it is not uncommon for a surgeon to book a case at say 11 a.m. thinking they can sneak a case in at a hospital, and they're not showing up for one, two, three hours after their posting time at the surgery center.
00:20:56
Speaker
That's just not a good use of the resources for a facility, which does not run 24-7-365. So it's some of those bigger considerations and then some of the others like, hey, could you just put these cases all on the same day? Could we establish a block time for you?
00:21:12
Speaker
Could one of you take an AM block and then follow with an afternoon block? Just doing things like that. So having those types of proactive, collaborative conversations further in advance as those schedules start to materialize for the weeks after is key. Yeah. And you've kind of touched on this theme of, hey, the scheduling and the efficiency is important for us and our teams. What about changing?
00:21:40
Speaker
cases. I got to imagine that can kind of throw a wrench in things too. If the time of the cases change around on you, is that an issue for you guys and your customers?
Aligning Goals in Surgery Centers
00:21:51
Speaker
Are you talking like start times or durations of the cases? Yeah, when cases get scheduled or rescheduled on different days and you kind of get late notifications on that, is that much of an issue?
00:22:02
Speaker
That not so much. I would say that the bigger issue is something that I like to refer to as truth in posting. I think if you ask any surgeon, and it's just the way it is, and they say, hey, how long do you need for this case? Oh, an hour. I need two hours or whatever. Usually those are woefully inaccurate.
00:22:23
Speaker
And with the adoption of electronic health records and all of the times that we record in the rooms or whatever, I really think that every facility, surgery centers, acute care, surgical hospitals, tertiary care centers, should utilize that data and say, hey, we're going to take an average duration from that surgeon's last 10 or 20 cases. And regardless if he or she thinks it's going to take an hour, we know what's going to take them three and a half.
00:22:49
Speaker
That is more important to everybody, not only the staff and the other surgeons who may be posting cases that they thought were going to be able to start on time or the anesthesia providers, then, hey, I've just got to reschedule this case. Something came up. Can we do it on Friday? So I really think the truth in posting is something that everyone should pay more attention to. It's not just what the surgeon or the surgeon scheduler put down. It's, hey, the last time you did a total knee here, last 10 times, last 20 times,
00:23:17
Speaker
it took you three hours. So we're going to post that for three hours. And we're not going to let you put it on another case before then or tell another surgeon, hey, that room will be ready until after that three hour window. So that's one of the things that is one of my causes. And I try to get everybody to drink that Kool-Aid, but it's been really challenging. Sure. The difference between what it should take or what you'd like to take versus what it actually does.
00:23:45
Speaker
Right. And a lot of anesthesiologists will roll their eyes when they see whatever the procedure is posted and then see what they requested to go. Yeah, that's not going to happen. So. Yeah. Dr. Kenjarski, one final question for you. And we do this with all of our guests every week. What's one thing our listeners can do this week to improve their surgery centers?
00:24:07
Speaker
Really look at all of the stakeholders involved. I love doing the stakeholder exercise and, you know, not assuming anything. If we look at a surgery center, for example, we have our patients, you know, surgeons, anesthesia providers. We have our OR staff. We have our administrative staff. We have, you know, the administrators who are both at the facility and then the others.
00:24:34
Speaker
And to look at everybody's goals and incentives and really make sure that those are in alignment. And if there are ongoing issues or if they have had trouble with anesthesia coverage or retaining anesthesia staff or canceling cases or whatever, ask that most important question. Why is this happening? Don't assume anything, but just say, hey, why weren't you able to show up? Or, you know, why did you not want to do the case at this time?
00:24:59
Speaker
or you've been talking about wanting to meet with our scheduler. Maybe it's time for us to do that so that everybody can express their concerns. Really just taking a look at something that may have been in existence for 10, 15, 20 years for the first time. As I mentioned, I think that what's going on in 2023 is great. Being able to tell people you can have a total hip replacement at a surgery center with your family close by
00:25:28
Speaker
and be able to get home and sleep in your own bed that same night is amazing. And I'm so glad we have had all the advances in every aspect in order to get to that. But we need to have an understanding that those types of cases done in that type of facility present new challenges and that we really need to make sure that we're all on the same page in order for it to not only make clinical sense, but financial sense for everybody as well. Fantastic. I appreciate the advice and thanks so much for joining us today.
00:25:57
Speaker
Great, yeah. And if anybody would like to connect, again, we have a great presence in Texas, but as I mentioned, we have our partners Ambulatory Management Solutions in Chicago and their group, their anesthesia group, mobile anesthesiologists there. We also have M2 anesthesia in Washington state and Oregon. We are preaching this gospel to everyone and we have local resources if anybody would like to talk or even in states that we aren't,
00:26:26
Speaker
I'd love to do this. I really have a passion for it, and it's what drove me from leaving an employee model to starting my own group back in 2011. Fantastic. All right. Cool. That's a wrap.
Virtual Care Initiatives and Industry Trends
00:26:44
Speaker
As always, it has been a busy week in healthcare, so let's jump right in.
00:26:49
Speaker
Michigan-based health system Trinity Health is rolling out a new program called the Virtual Connected Care Program.
00:26:57
Speaker
This initiative changes up the healthcare delivery model by weaving in a virtual nurse to help care for patients and reduce the workload for in-person nurses. So under this new model, a patient's care team would consist of three people, two that are in person, the direct care nurse and the licensed practical nurse, and then the third would be the virtual nurse.
00:27:21
Speaker
According to Doug Desenzo, who's the regional chief nursing officer, the hope for this program is that it will help health care facilities find a way to decrease the demand for registered nursing services while still delivering high-quality care that patients require.
00:27:39
Speaker
So the virtual nurse will be on camera, so they'll still have some face-to-face element with the patient. And the virtual nurse can provide a number of benefits. They can answer questions, provide support, or check patients out on demand. They can connect with the families, therapists, and social workers.
00:28:00
Speaker
They can help prep the patient for discharge and again, answer any questions and just help ease the burden that is on our healthcare workers right now. So if a patient needs something and they press the call button, the nurse is doing a million other things, has so many other patients they're caring for. By the time they have to kind of drop everything, go back to the patient, the virtual nurse could have answered all of their questions and then some. So that's kind of the vision.
00:28:27
Speaker
And when I first read this headline, I was very skeptical. But after reading the vision of the program and knowing how much everyone is struggling right now with staffing, I actually think it's a pretty innovative way to use technology to help solve some of these staffing issues since you obviously can never replace a nurse entirely, but this might be a good way to kind of help ease the burden that our healthcare workers are experiencing right now.
00:28:55
Speaker
So the health system intends to launch the virtual connected care program across 88 hospitals in 26 states over the next 12 to 17 months. So I'm interested to see how it's received and how it goes. Our next story is from Becker's ASC and it's a pertinent story considering the discussion we just had with our guest this week, Dr. Ken Jarski from Noble Anesthesia Partners.
00:29:23
Speaker
In a discussion with Adam Spiegel, who's the CEO of North Star Anesthesia, Adam shared that the demand for anesthesia providers in ASEs is growing right now, which is great. But unfortunately, at the same time, reimbursement rates are shrinking and they're also experiencing some staffing shortages.
00:29:43
Speaker
Since Medicare and insurance companies are reducing reimbursement, anesthesia costs are being subsidized by hospitals and ASCs depending on the case. And to add one more layer to it, with certified nurses being able to perform as anesthetists in many states, it is becoming more cost-effective to hire multiple CRNAs as opposed to multiple anesthesiologists.
00:30:08
Speaker
So that's kind of the state of things right now, but what do we do? My biggest takeaway from reading this is that it is vital that surgery centers partner and work closely with their anesthesia providers. Gone are the days where you can kind of semi ignore your anesthesia provider and not really know who they are and how, you know, the ins and outs of how the relationship works. You really need to bring them into the fold. Consider them a stakeholder.
00:30:36
Speaker
and kind of hunker down together and create solutions that work for you both. So super important that ASCs this year and moving forward kind of tight in that relationship with their anesthesia providers.
Supporting New Administrators and Creative Stress Relief
00:30:53
Speaker
Our third story is not so much a story, but I wanted to take a minute to share a program that ASCA is offering that I think is so important to the industry right now. In 2023, ASCA is offering two classes for what they call their ASC Administrator Development Program. They have two programs that start this year, and the first is a hybrid class that starts in May.
00:31:18
Speaker
And it's a mix of in-person content at the ASCA conference in Louisville and then monthly virtual content after that. And then the second is an all virtual class, but that doesn't start until October of 2023. So enrollment right now is open for the hybrid class and prospective mentors and mentees should submit their applications prior to February 28th.
00:31:42
Speaker
You know, due to staffing shortages and the shake-up from COVID, there are so many administrators who were promoted without the experience that former administrators have typically had in the past. So this program is hugely important and matches up those mentors and mentees to help provide guidance, education, and moral support as these newer admins get acclimated.
00:32:07
Speaker
So if this sounds like something you're interested in or know someone who would be a good fit, please check out ASCA's website and we'll provide the link directly in our show notes as well. And to end our new segment on a positive note, Amy Avila is a student registered nurse anesthetist, and she's using her creativity and love for drawing to help her coworkers and peers reduce job-related anxiety.
00:32:35
Speaker
Amy is an extremely talented artist, and she uses human anatomy, medical equipment, and healthcare in general as inspiration for her drawings. Her peers use her drawings to color, and it's a way for them to both learn and relax at the same time, as we all know the toll that working in healthcare can take on someone's mental health.
00:32:56
Speaker
So to see Amy's drawings, you can search for her on Pinterest and we'll also include the link directly in our show notes. But you can go ahead and download them, give her feedback. They're really well done. And that news story officially wraps up this week's podcast. Thank you, as always, for spending a few minutes of your week with us. Make sure you subscribe or leave a review on whichever platform you're listening from. I hope you have a great day and we'll see you again next week.