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Meet Katie Aurand, PA-C
As a PA in surgical subspecialties as well as a multi-sport athlete, Katie Aurand shares how she pursues her many passions. Katie is a trauma, acute care surgery, and surgical critical care PA. She’s also a Kona qualifier in the Ironman distance and a Boston Marathon qualifier. From coaching other running and multisport athletes to raising her toddler, working in trauma and surgery ICU and pursuing her DSMc degree, Katie is always on the go.
In this episode, Katie shares how she deals with burnout and stress. We also discuss the systemic changes needed in medicine and how PAs can be involved in creating a more supportive healthcare system. This episode is full of encouragement on setting crazy high goals and learning how to support our loved ones, coworkers and patients on their own journeys to reach their goals.
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Being a Beginner
What an important reminder that it’s never too late and you are never too old to be a beginner. The beauty of being a beginner is that it can only get better from here. When you are a beginner, there are no expectations on your skills and success.
It’s truly a gift to “go back” to beginner status. It’s both great to learn something new and to keep searching for your newest passion. Whether in work, in life, ins discovering your next or best specialty as a PA, passion is a key piece to living a great life that you love.
Support System
Regardless of your status: beginner to expert, we each need support front hose around us. It’s incredibly important to surround yourself with people who support you and your new endeavors.
A network of those who encourage you to try new things is key to living a brave life filled with joy and creative pursuits. Having people in your corner fills you up. You get to help them as much as they help you.
This can be a really difficult piece, but it’s important to acknowledge when you need help. In this episode Katie reminds us that in order to do the things we love and wish to pursue, it’s absolutely OK to get help.
Whether that consists of asking our friends for help or utilizing daycare, leaning on our partner or spouse, recruiting family, or paying a babysitter, help is help. We all need help. (Yes, even you!)
Work & Training
As an elite level triathlete who just qualified for the Kona Ironman distance triathlon, Katie does *a lot* of training. More hours than most of us spend working out in a week, Katie might spend training in one single day.
How can you reframe exercise, self-care, hobbies and creative pursuits in your mind? Self-care isn’t selfish. Training isn’t selfish. Exercise isn’t selfish.
A reminder for moms who work, providers who are parents, and those who have a passion they wish to pursue. Our littles watch us. Kids are observant. They see what we are doing, how we are treating ourselves, and what we are doing with our time and talents.
Instead of propagating things like mom guilt and comparison, why aren’t we supporting each other? We should be building each other up. In need of encouragement, we have the ability to offer that encouragement to each other.
As far as figuring out how to juggle her work schedule and training calendar, Katie reminds us that this looks different for everyone. When her training schedule is developed, she and her coach remember that time at work is stress on the body and this is taken into consideration.
As a PA working in high stress, high acuity areas of medicine with 12-hour shifts, Katie has adjusted her training schedule to fit her life and her work schedule.
Flexibility & Boundaries
When you are shooting big shots and striving to reach lofty goals, things don’t always go according to plan. Be flexible to change plans. Be aware of burnout and stress on the body to see when a change needs to be made.
This flexibility applies to how much you are working and how often you are working out alike.
Katie offers a poignant reminder that it’s ok to say no. No is, in fact, a complete sentence. If we are going to use “No” as a firm, kind boundary of our own, it’s equally as important to support other people when they say no to you.
Respecting others’ boundaries will set an example. If you want your boundaries to be respected, do the same to those in your life.
Burnout
Vulnerably, Katie shared that she is still dealing with burnout. There have been seasons of more and seasons of less burnout in her career in healthcare and during her time as an athletic trainer.
Openly she wonders “Can you truly be happy and satisfied and content in a very high stakes, high anxiety, high pressure subspecialty?”
It’s likely true that you will always have a degree of burnout in your life and your career. As a medical community, we need more of a discussion of dealing with burnout while it’s happening.
Burnout is not a clear, cut and dry before and after. There is a spectrum of more burnout to less burnout and the best we can do is set up habits and processes that lend themselves to living on the less burned out side of the scale.
What’s Next?
When looking forward in her career and in healthcare, Katie is pursuing her doctorate degree in hospital administration. She aims to lean into an administrative role.
Ultimately, she wants to change the culture in her organization and others to help APPs who are dealing with burnout. A culture that is more supportive with administrators who have “been there” in the trenches is a key piece of this.
It’s a Process
Medicine is stuck in a vicious cycle right now. We need to be asking ourselves and our teams the hard questions like How do we change patient experience, workplace culture? We need to ask questions on a microclimate and a systemic level and then work on answers together.
Postpartum & Pregnant Wellness
When, as an elite athlete, Katie became pregnant, she felt the research on pregnant exercise let her down. Therefore she felt very lost during pregnancy.
Unfortunately, exercise recommendations are not made for pregnant women, because we don’t often research them. Most of the existing research on pregnant women, women in general and women in the postpartum period is done in runners, not triathletes.
Katie is hard at work on her doctorate paper: synthesize current research for pregnant and postpartum athletes on runners, swimmers, and cyclists. Ultimately, the goal is for the pregnant person to feel empowered and be able to make the best evidence-based decisions that are best for them and their baby.
Providers should, across the board and with confidence, support athletes to stay active while during and postpartum period.
Postpartum Pelvic Floor
When it comes to recovering from pregnancy and delivery, many women are not ready to return to impact activity at 6 weeks postpartum. This blanket “clearance” of athletes and women at their 6 week visit needs to stop.
Katie shares that we need better screening for postpartum anxiety and postpartum depression as well a pelvic floor dysfunction. We need more integration between mental health services and pelvic floor physical therapy with the postpartum recovery period for women.
As with all things in life, the postpartum journey is not a linear, stepwise process. It takes about 2 years for a woman’s body to return to homeostasis after and having a baby. As a medical community, we need to support women through these changes.
Research shows women are performing at a higher level postpartum. Having a baby doesn’t mean the end of your athletic career. You can still set crazy high goals and you’re not any less than or different because you had a baby. That makes you even more superhuman.
We are, as women and as humans and as moms, capable of way more than we give ourselves credit for. We should support each other to set these crazy high goals, whether in our family, career, or athletics. It’s ok if you don’t reach the goals, but the important thing is setting them.
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