Gibson Area Hospital & Health Services | Gibson gets it! | Spring/Summer 2020

Gibson gets it! 11 Help is here. If you know a friend or have a family member in need of addiction treatment, please call Family Health Care of Gibson City at 217-784-5500 . By Maggie Rotermund (edited for length) S aint Louis University School of Medicine is tackling the country’s opioid abuse crisis by training community physicians to recognize and treat addictions. SLU has created Missouri’s first addiction medicine fellowship. The addiction medicine fellowship is among the first in the country, as the American College of Graduate Medical Education only began certifying addiction medicine fellowships in 2018. SLU’s first fellow, Kate Austman, MD, began work in January. Fellows will do rotations at SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital and SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital, as well as in clinics and community health centers. While at St. Mary’s, fellows will work with Jaye Shyken, MD, the associate program director for the fellowship, at the WISH Center. WISH treats women with addiction issues throughout their pregnancies and the post-partum period. “Our setup is unique,” said program director Fred Rottnek, MD, a professor of family and community medicine at SLU. “The fellows will complete core rotations in family medicine, psychiatry, maternal/fetal health and telehealth. The rotations are typically two months each, but every Thursday will be spent either at the WISH Center or at ARCA (Assisted Recovery Centers of America).” Dr. Rottnek said by working with ARCA, SLU will be able to help 15 agencies at more than 30 sites across the state. “We provide the medication management piece while the home Saint Louis University forms Missouri’s first addiction medicine fellowship Pictured are addictionmedicine fellowship programdirector Fred Rottnek, MD, a professor of family and communitymedicine at SLU, and inaugural fellow Kate Austman, MD. Photo by Saint Louis University. agencies provide wrap-around services,” he said. “With telehealth, we can address some of these urgent needs faster.” The first fellow Dr. Austman is a family medicine doctor from Gibson City, Illinois. She said watching the opioid crisis hit her community led her to seek out additional training. “It started when I started to see moms with heroin addictions come in. The closest methadone clinic is about an hour from us,” she said. She did a short fellowship at Rush University in 2018 that included immersion weekends and webinars. Wanting more, she met Dr. Shyken, who is a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health and a SLUCare gynecologist, at a conference and Dr. Shyken suggested Dr. Austman apply for SLU’s newly created fellowship. “At that point, I thought there was no way I could do this—I was too busy,” Dr. Austman said. “But after another conference last July I told my husband that I can’t stop thinking about doing this.” SLU’s fellowship allows Dr. Austman to refresh her skills as a physician while bringing added value to her 20-bed community hospital and patients back home. With the support of her administration and her family, she found an apartment in St. Louis where she stays during the week. She heads back to the family farm each weekend to see her husband and two of her children. Her oldest is a freshman at Colorado State University. “I talk with my staff every day, and there is a physician assistant and another doctor coming in to help out,” she said. “I’m also still running a clinic (in Illinois) once a month.” Dr. Rottnek said he was thrilled to get a physician of Dr. Austman’s caliber and experience as SLU’s first fellow. “We knew that we wanted to start with someone in the region so that we could build partnerships through this work,” he said. “I was extremely happy to get Kate here.” And Dr. Austman was happy to return—she got her undergraduate degree from SLU. “I loved it here.” Creating community change “This is hard work—it’s messy, patient- centered medicine,” Dr. Rottnek said. “We are hoping to create opportunities for physicians to come here for training and go back and champion best practices to their colleagues.” “We need to change the culture,” Dr. Austman said. “By normalizing these conversations we can help provide our patients with the care they need.”