How The Connecticut Burn Center in Bridgeport Helps Burn Patients and Families Recover

National Burn Awareness Week is in February, and it's recognized by the American Burn Association. It is a chance to promote burn prevention and awareness in communities. With more than 3,000 members, the ABA dedicates their efforts and resources to promoting and supporting burn-related care, prevention, education, and research.

The Connecticut Burn Center in Bridgeport Hospital is the only burn center in the state. Dr Roselle Crombie is a member of the ABA. She is a surgeon specializing in burn surgery and surgical critical care at several of the Yale New Haven Health Systems flagship hospitals in Southern Connecticut including the Bridgeport Burn Center. Her particular passion is a mix of burns, burn and trauma reconstruction, wounds, and general surgery. Dr. Crombie talked about the long road to recovery for some burn patients. She says the number of burn patients has decreased and many burns are preventable. The most common type of burn is a scald burn usually in the kitchen. Dr. Crombie says patients and their families can benefit from CT Paid leave, because it can help financially and emotionally, and it allows for caregiver leave.

To get in touch with the ABA please go to their website: ameriburn.org      American Burn Association – Improving the lives of those affected by burn injury

To get in touch with the Bridgeport Burn Center go to their website at: The Connecticut Burn Center - Bridgeport Hospital

For information or to apply for benefits please go to: ctpaidleave.org  https://www.ctpaidleave.org/

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Transcript

Nancy Barrow: 0:01

Hello Connecticut, and welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast The title basically says it all. I'm Nancy Barrow, and I will be delving into this new state program and how it can help you and your family. This podcast will give you information you should know about Connecticut Paid Leave and maybe just a little bit more. Connecticut, paid leave brings peace of mind to your home, family and workplace. Welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast. The National Burn Awareness Week is in February, and it's recognized by the American Burn Association, also known as the ABA. It's a chance to promote burn prevention and awareness in communities, and this year's theme focuses on reducing burn risks in homes, apartments and all living spaces. My guest today is Dr Roselle Crombie, who is a surgeon specializing in general surgery, burn surgery, and surgical critical care at several of the Yale New Haven health system, flagships, hospitals in southern Connecticut that includes the Bridgeport Burn Center. Her particular passion is a mix of burns, burn trauma reconstruction and wounds and general surgery. She is highly involved as faculty in the department of surgery the Yale School of Medicine over the course of her career, and mentors the younger, pre health generation. Her post graduate fellowships were in burn surgery and surgical critical care at Yale University School of Medicine, where she currently remains on faculty. Outside of her job nationally, she has served as the 32nd president of the North American burn society and served on the ethics committee and epidemiology for the American Burn Association. She is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a fellow of the American Burn Association. She was recently appointed to be the director at large for the board of the American Board of wound medicine and surgery, and is currently the VP program chair for the Connecticut American College of Surgeons chapter, the executive board and chair of the women's surgery group, and is involved in the women's surgeon groups within several national societies. She serves as a reviewer for The Journal of Burn Care and Research the Journal of Wound Care, and has served on the Military review for Burn Grants. She's a member of the consensus committee on tissue regeneration for the Journal of wound care. With a team of other burn colleagues, she sits as VP of the non for profit Reach Burn Foundation to support the needs of adult burn survivors. Additionally, she serves on the board of the Burn Research Foundation. She has numerous publications. And finally, Dr Crombie is married with three children. Welcome to The Paid Leave Podcast. Dr Crombie, you are a busy woman!

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 2:49

Thank you. Yeah. You know, I think we all try to do our part. It takes a team, right?

Nancy Barrow: 2:54

It sure does. We'll start at the beginning. Can you tell me about your involvement with the American Burn Association, also known as the ABA.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 3:02

Yeah so, you know, the ABA is kind of like our over arching body that oversees a lot of the burn surgeons and burn care throughout the United States. It first started in 1967 really just kind of grassroots these, I think it was like 17 surgeons have been meeting for a period of six years, and then they kind of decided, hey, this is we have a unique specialty. We've learned a lot after the war. Why don't we actually form an association? So four of those individuals, including a bunch of different positions, there's a Basil Pruitt was at the he's like a pillar in burn care, and Dr. McMillan, Dr.Arts, Dr. Feller and Dr. Boswick, born the actual ABA in 1967 all those guys have all been presidents of our association, and since then, it's grown to 1000s of members now that include the burn really the burn team. I'm really just one small part of the burn team I can't take away from my all important, my nurses, my therapists, the social workers, the firefighters that get the patients to us, and EMTs and certainly all of the other staff that support us to create this burn environment and the continuum of burn care even beyond the hospital. And that's really what the ABA formed, was it formed this incredible team of just individuals that are part of the care. And I wish every disease had something like that. It's essential to the burn patient, because there's so many other issues that they need to deal with. Yeah, that's how it all started.

Nancy Barrow: 4:37

And how does it affect Connecticut? How does the American Burn Association? Are you a member of it, and what are their responsibilities for that?

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 4:43

I first became a member when I was a fellow, and that was really my first exposure to this community. It's a very unique specialty in that it crosses for physicians. It crosses both general surgery, plastic surgery. I know some colleagues of mine that are in rehab medicine. Yeah, and it's really a home for all of those individuals. So you could really just be a member and come to the conferences, which there are many. Now, there's our one conference that happens throughout the usually in the spring of the early spring of the year. But there's regional conferences, like we're in the northeast, there's a south, Southern burn Colloquium. And then there's, they're just reenacting Western burn. There's a Midwest, there's Ohio. So in addition to overseeing and kind of helping all of those different areas, it really is a resource for us to kind of talk about protocols, what's being done. Because there's only, at the actual moment, about 250 burn surgeons in the nation that are caring for all of these patients. I mean, we have teams. We've got, you know, mid level providers, nurse practitioners and PAs and stuff like that. So it's essential that we have a an overarching body that can kind of guide us. And so the way that it kind of helps us is to really help with things such as training and something called abls or advanced burn care. And that can be many people can take that even EMTs, it doesn't. You don't need to be a physician. And certainly they do things such as lobby for us. I remember as a fellow going to DC, being dragged down there, and that was my first experience of like meeting our senator at the time and really advocating for the different things that we were having in Connecticut related to our burn patients. And so they so they are involved both in advocacy, prevention. I was involved in publishing on treadmill injuries, because people, January, people would be getting back in shape, and then a lot of these kids would just grab the treadmill and then get a full thickness friction burn. So we were able to, you know, lobby and change the through a lot of publications and stuff like that, to change the safety. I don't know if you notice, if you go and look at, you know, a treadmill, like Dick's Sporting Goods now, it has a has a, like a safety latch to it that will immediately shut off if you were to fall off of it, or any there's different safety things, and that's all part of the, you know, the lobbying and different research that we kind of brought the to, you know, our nation. So the ABA is very involved in, you know, a lot of things, education, prevention, but also care.

Nancy Barrow: 7:13

It's amazing. I know that you work at the Bridgeport Burn Center, and it's the only burn center in Connecticut, but you said there's only, like, 250 burn surgeons. So do a lot of people from out of state come to Connecticut to the Bridgeport Burn Center?

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 7:29

Yeah, so we draw from the other burn centers in our area are, there's Cornell, which is down in the city Rhode Island, which is in Providence. And then we do send, there's the Shriners, which is a wonderful institution, kind of, obviously very well funded, and most of our larger burn kids we send up there. Because the way that I think about it is, if my kid had a, you know, a terrible, devastating burn, there's a school in the hospital. We just don't have that at our burn center here, but it's kind of cool, because you have a network of burn centers, but we draw from southern Rhode Island. We'll get patients from there. Western Massachusetts are we get a lot of patients from because they both their burn centers are in Boston. So as you can imagine, if you think of just like the northern part of Connecticut, as you go up, I 91 like all of that, it's much quicker for them to come down. I remember getting a burn from Vermont, Southern Vermont one, one of the years that I was here. And we do get some, you know, New Yorkers as well, depending on where they are, because the Connecticut State line is, is, you know, on the border there.

Nancy Barrow: 8:35

How did you get interested in helping burn patients? Because I think it takes a very special kind of person to do this work. It's a lot there's a lot of disfigurement. It must be really hard or rewarding when you can help patients.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 8:51

You know, I never think of the hard part. So my personal story is that way back when it was a required rotation for my training, so you had to have burn surgery as a rotation, and that was really my first exposure. I was shocked and pleasantly surprised that it combined a lot of different things that I like. So in that six week period, I had a lot of inspirational patients. So I think that that's what really drew me to it. And then I wanted, I sought, to pursue an extra year of that training. And, you know, to just tie it back to the ABA, I didn't realize that it was going to be such a collaborative community, which is wonderful. And I think, I think in medicine, there's so much competition, and it's very different than some of the other specialties that I had experienced. Like there was, it was really neat to meet people that were ahead of me in their career. It was so collaborative. And I think that that we have to be that way within burns, because there's so few of us, yeah, and so all of those things are really kind of brought me into the field. And kind of like you, it's like, when we choose our career, we figure out what, what are the things that we like. It just, it kind of comes just naturally.

Nancy Barrow: 10:00

What are the most common types of burns that you see? Do you see home, kitchen splatter burns? Or is it work? Or are they all over the place? Electrical, chemical?

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 10:10

Yeah so we see all of them. Just percentage wise, the vast majority of burns are scalds. Unfortunately, there's a more of a male predilection in sort of the younger age group as well. Unfortunately, it's a lot like this. There's seasonalities to burn. So right now it's when we're in the winter time, and we see a lot of kids with scald injuries. So they're pulling down, like toddlers that pull down the tea because it's up on top there, you know, water bottles, or some of that size. So those are, or they, they put the baby in the sink, and the baby, like, kick the, you know, the faucet and hot water came down on them, you know. And a lot of our prevention is focused around that. For, you know, an overwhelmed parent or whatever. There's house fires, obviously, at this time of year as well. You know, with the advent of the fire pits, that happens to, you know, a lot more in in sort of, like the fall and the spring season, you know, celebrating, maybe not paying attention to different things. We've had people literally fall into fire pits. That's a whole, that's a whole big thing. And then certainly the other, the other sort of recreational thing that we see a lot of fireworks. You know, there's always, like, a little bit of something going on with that. Or people will barbecue on the beach. We've got beaches down in southern Connecticut, and they'll forget to bury the poles and you're walking, you know, barefoot on the beach, as people do when you get burned. So, yeah, we see all of them, you know, in terms of those are the most common, but we definitely have, you know, like, I've had chemical burns from the various universities around us. I've had somebody put too much chlorine in the pool, and the poor kid got shocked. Wow, yeah, we've got, you know, electrical workers that are up there trimming bushes, and, you know, they forget the concept of physics and the electrical field, and they get zapped. So there's all sorts of different mechanisms that we see, but statistically, the most common are really the open flame and that scald is the most common, followed by open flames.

Nancy Barrow: 12:09

And how do you treat them differently? And maybe you should tell me what the difference is between like first degree and fourth degree burns.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 12:17

Yeah, first degree burn is everybody, sadly, is very familiar. It's sunburn. So it is injury to your top layer of your skin, called your epidermis, and it's usually very painful, as you can imagine, because all the nerves are intact. Second degree burn is really the best way to describe that is if you see blistering. So it's gone through the first first layer the epidermis, and then into the second layer of the dermis. And it's your body is reacting by, you know, putting fluid into that area and, and that's really nerves are still intact. And there's also a superficial second degree and deeper second degree, which is closer to third degree. Third degree means that you, you really, you know, you've gone all through the layers of the skin and kind of sitting into the pretty deep layer. And those, those by appearance, tend to be really thick and kind of not sensate, and they don't move as much as you can imagine, right? The way that I can it too, is like when you fry an egg, you can't get it back to that liquid stage. It's, it's just, it's just solid, and then fourth degree burn is beyond that, down into sort of the deeper tissues like the bones and the muscles and stuff like that. And we really see those more and sort of more the devastating industrial injuries, or if there's a house fire and the patient's been found down for longtime, car fires, and you know, stuff like that.

Nancy Barrow: 13:37

And tell me what you do as a surgeon and how you treat people.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 13:42

Just like any other surgical disease, we always have to ask ourselves, do they need surgery to begin with, right? Are we going to make the patient better that way? Specifically for burns, they can be incredibly painful, as you can imagine, if you know every single part of our skin has nerves, right? So to treat the the skin, you have to take out the devitalized tissue. That's not something most people will tolerate, if you can imagine, like a very painful sunburn, and even some, you know, very fair individuals, like I have my husband's red headed if he blisters, it's very painful. So that's something that you have to take them to the operating room for, primarily for anesthesia. But the goal is really a concept called debridment where you take away the dead tissue to allow the living tissue to heal, and then eventually, if you need some some of it heals on its own, some of it we need to replace with its own skin. And that's what a skin graft is. It's like planting a sod. We take a little piece from somewhere else in the body where there's normal skin, and we put it in put it into the area after it's been debrided. That's, you know, thickly burned. But there's also other things, such as down the line people have scars. So one of my big interests is to do a lot of different reconstructions to, you know, loosen up that scar, make it more functional. And then some of that includes lasers. There's quite a bit that we do as a surgeon for those those treatments.

Nancy Barrow: 15:05

Yeah and I know that you mentioned a team, so tell me how that works, too. So if a burn patient comes to you.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 15:10

So the team includes, first, the outside hospitals where they're being seen, or clinics, and that's incredibly important. We do a lot of outreach. This great guy, former burner, Jay Bresky, who goes out and does a lot of education to the to the various different not only ERs, but just urgent cares. Because a lot of people are seeking care, they're just what should be referred and what should be referred, but also how you can, you know, dress a burn, all that other stuff, but we really teach them how to evaluate it. So just like you asked me, What's the first, second and third degree burn like, it's very important, if I can't see the pictures, for them to be able to describe that. So there's education of that. So that's the beginning of the team. And then there's the transport team, which includes, obviously, the EMTs, the the pilots or the ambulance drivers, paramedics that get the patient safely from wherever they're going to our hospital. And then there is the the on site team, which always includes the nurses, the burn surgeon. There's typically a burn Tech who is medically trained to help us with, you know, dressings and stuff like that. And then, literally, every week, we kind of map out for the family and for the patient, what happens. Once a week, we meet with the whole team, so the doctors, the nurses, the physical therapists, the occupational therapists really deal with kind of just face and hands, nutritionists, there's social workers to kind of help with the overall planning on how we're going to get them through the hospital stay and how we get them home, what support that they need. And then there is clergy, and we have a different types of counseling services that happen as well. So we that team sits down pretty faithfully every week, on Tuesday at 10am to go through every patient that has been admitted to the burn center to kind of come up with a comprehensive plan. And I find it great because two things, I always learn something from listening, and I think it come it allows us to come up with a more comprehensive plan for the patient. But then additionally, I think it's incredibly important for each one of those individuals that are sitting at the table to know that they have an important role in this patient's care that we can't do, you know, without them. So it's a chance for them to speak, and it really kind of helps to really just make it a wholesome team effort to get this patient through their care. We also have an outpatient, you know, after they go home, they come and see our PA and then us. I have a burn fellow. They're their residents, obviously, because the faculty at Yale, they're rotating as well, and we see that they're part of their care, both in the inpatient and the outpatient and and it's nice because it's a continuum for them to be seen, you know, as outpatient care as well. Because a lot of I guess I should say that we've been really great nationwide about doing things, about prevention and getting them numbers, I think, down to a much better level than you know, when I first started this, over 20 years ago. But what that means is that we're managing a lot more of those patients as outpatients. So we are. We've created effectively the same some you know, team in the outpatient setting to help them through the next phases of their recovery, probably the most important phase, quite frankly.

Nancy Barrow: 18:21

Yeah it's interesting that you said the educational part of it, that you've educated enough people so that with prevention, so that the numbers have really decreased in the last 20 years.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 18:30

Yeah, it's still a big problem. You know, we and like I was alluding to at the beginning of the podcast, there's been a lot of safety things that you know that happen, you know over time in terms of building in, like, I bring up the fireplaces, like a lot of places in the nation, they don't have centralized heating. They have, like, a stove with the glass stove. So we were getting, like, a bunch of people and toddlers just going up to the glass so there's been a lot of changes in the design of both fireplaces and glass stoves to be a little bit more, you know, to be safer.

Nancy Barrow: 19:05

Yeah, and that's your advocacy, right there. You know, with the ABA going, going and advocating for those burn patients, I know that you mentioned counseling, and tell me about the mental health and behavioral health, how important is, is that for recovery in patients who have severe burns.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 19:23

it's, it's incredibly important. It's probably one of the most important things after you kind of get them through the burn. A lot of our patients, there is a there is a percentage of patients that come with mental illness, so we have to address that and keep their therapies going throughout the hospital stay, and kind of keep that in mind. In addition to that, you know, no matter how, whether it's an accidental thing or intentional or something happened, it's a traumatic event. And we, really, all of us, have been kind of. Trained in having to help the patient through the trauma, and sometimes we have to get our psychiatric colleagues involved. We certainly have education and counseling, you know, throughout their hospital stay as well. Because in a lot of ways, their their lives are forever changed, right? Because they've had something happen, and even if they're able to heal from the initial injury, they they have, they have scars, whether they be physical or emotional. Yeah. So 100% what I do with my patients is, after the they get through the, you know, hospital stay, and they're kind of seeing our pas and us, and the outpatient is really recommend, you know, for for actually counseling to happen, and everybody needs a little bit different everybody's got a little bit different support system. Some people don't have any. So it's really a matter of, you know, matching the patient with what they need. And then the other thing I should point out is there's a wonderful society that kind of came out of the ABA called the Phoenix society, and it's a specific society for burn survivors. And they have created something called the SOAR program, where you can actually even have some of my old patients that have gone through it the SOAR program become advocates, and we call them in to talk to our current patients, you know, to actually be sort of buddies, and we have a support group, and that's a lot of what. You know, I realized probably early on in my career that we were, we were needing to do more of that for survivors.

Nancy Barrow: 21:35

Let's talk about the caregivers, because I imagine there's a bit of trauma dealing with a loved one who has been burned. Do you have support groups for them as well?

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 21:44

We do. We do. I mean, a lot of the the nurses and the physicians are really great at pointing that out. I think when I first sit down with with a family of a big burn in our in our patients room, I I literally tell them that you're gonna we're gonna tie we're gonna die 1000 deaths before we come out the other side. We hope to come out the other side, but there's going to be good days and there's going to be bad days, and that's just just the norm, but we're here to help you through it. And the nurses, we've had wonderful kind of like you were saying that it takes a special person to do burns from the physicians, I think it's even more of a special person as the to be a burn nurse. And we've been very lucky over the years to have had people that have been here for a long time, or people that come for a period of time in their lives, and then they go on to other places, but they're incredibly dedicated, and they are amazing with the families, and I think just bringing them back down, and, you know, we do this, it's a continuous conversation that we have with the families and the support caregivers, because those, ultimately, those are the people that are going to be helping them through the most important phase, right? A lot of my bigger burn patients, they don't remember at all their their acute hospital stay, and then all of a sudden they're like, whoa. What happened? Next thing they know they're going to rehab. So it's really a lot of education and helping the, you know, the family members or loved ones, acclimate to that this trauma has occurred. These are the things that we are concerned about. This is what to expect, you know, and you know, we're very lucky that over over time, you know, the survival rate has gotten a lot better, that we can talk about those wonderful you know, this is this stage of healing.

Nancy Barrow: 23:22

Connecticut Paid Leave offers up to 12 weeks of income replacement for mental health issues, and you can take your 12 weeks off all at once or in a block that we say you can do intermittent leave or reduce schedule leave from work. So there is flexibility for the caregiver and for yourself if you're getting treated. So I love the fact that, you know, we can help in this instance, with the caregivers and and with someone who's going through a really traumatic burn, with getting some some financial assistance, right, like FMLA gives you your job back, but we are the income replacement portion of it, and it's a it's a pretty new program. We've only been around giving benefits since January of 2022, so I think that it would be a really good resource for them to know that Connecticut paid leave can help them. And how important are our resources like this for you guys to have to talk to your patients and their caregivers.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 24:22

They're incredibly important. I think you know, if you if you think about it, for this part of my practice, they these patients never expect to meet me, right? And then all of a sudden, their life has changed. And that is the biggest question I have, is, when am I going home? When can I go back to my job? When can I go back to school? Is another one. There's a lot of, you know, obviously, and, and that's, it's so amazing that you guys were able to get that program through, so that they can have that little breath of, okay. They've got me, it's, it's, it's going to be okay. So, you know. Kudos to all of you that were able to push that through, because it's incredibly important. If you can imagine, it's just that safety net of one less thing to worry about amongst the many stressful things that you have to worry about in a blind patient.

Nancy Barrow: 25:13

Yeah and I think the other thing is, you talked about occupational therapy and physical therapy that happens afterwards, and it's a long process, and if it's a child like the parents have to take them, and so they can take that time away from work to drive their child to, you know, occupational therapy or physical therapy, and they can get income replacement. So it's it just, is that, that flexibility, that they can take, you know, small amounts of time to go drive them to their therapies, you know. And I think that that is also a really good and beneficial program for burn patients and their caregivers.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 25:49

You know, it's, it's super important. So thank you.

Nancy Barrow: 25:52

Yeah, what can you tell me about burn prevention, since this month kind of highlights the awareness of it, like, what would you tell parents to do in the home, because you say it's tea, it's the scaldings, it's the things that are preventable.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 26:06

Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of the same things that our pediatric colleagues and our trauma colleagues do in terms of prevention of trauma, you know, like, I think of, you know, if you've got toddlers, I would just crawl on down on the floor and see what they see. So so the outlets are every now and then I'll get it. I'll get somebody that got zapped in an outlet because somebody stuck something in there. Right? The bath is a very big location for a lot of accidents. And as much as we all love our hot showers, I'm a huge proponent of the, you know, the actual water being at that proper temperature. Because, if you can imagine, both for old people and for babies, they have thinner skin than, say, you and I do so in less than a second with very hot water, they will have a full thickness burn versus, you know, something you know, that hit you and I so water temperature is huge. The kitchen is another big place, both not only for skull, but just if you're going to cook. And lots of people have gas flame, don't, don't wear a fluffy sweater or fluffy shirt, tie, tie your hair back. Have pot holders, you know, all of these things we get a lot during COVID. Oh my gosh, we got so many grease burns. I think people were just making French fries, left and right comfort food. Yes, exactly. So there was a, there was a ton of grease burns. And that's, that's a whole nother thing. Grease is worse than water. It actually carries the heat a lot more. So those, those tend to be really thick burns if you, if you spill the oil. And then the other big thing was to, basically, if you've got a grease fire, don't put water on it, because that's just going to spread it. Just get a just get a cover of a pot. And how do you kill a fire? You suffocate it, cut off its oxygen. It'll go out. So these are the types of things that I mean, it seems like sort of common sense, right? The other thing, when to the fall season, we've got a lot of woods in Connecticut. People have a lot of leaves. One of the things, you know, I've had unfortunate patients over the years that wanted to kind of get those leaves to burn, and they do that with an accelerant, and the accelerant, the vapors are also flammable. So, you know, that's a no go on that. So just, you know, the same bear that taught us all of those things, if you're a little about forest fires, it's Smokey Bear. It's the same Smokey the Bear. Yep, exactly.

Nancy Barrow: 28:39

Yeah well, how do you refill your coffers? Since, you know, I say it takes a very special person to do this, to be a surgeon and to work on these patients, I do feel that, what do you do to refill your coffers and take care of yourself?

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 28:55

Good question. So I personally like to exercise. So I need to exercise every day. My family knows if I they can't talk to me until I've gone and done my thing. But I saw that question. I was thinking myself, there's a bunch of different things that we do when we've had, you know, and when we've had, like, a particularly traumatic either day or a patient, you know, who happened to pass away, we always try to take the time to have a debrief, to sit down with the nurses and the team that was involved with them, so that we could, you know, really talk about, what are the things like, what are you feeling? What are the things that we think we could have done better? What are the things that and I take that time also. I think we're really good at telling people the things they've done wrong, but I I'd like people to know the things they've done right, because I think that's just as important to hear, if not more, to be positive about that. The other thing is we, we have because there's so few of us. I think a lot of us are very well connected. I like I am connected to so many burn surges throughout the country through text. I. Even in this less than half hour podcast, I can see texts coming from, you know, probably about 25 different burn surgeons various different issues. So we always it's like a big group that we can kind of, hey, what do you think about this? Hey, this is going on. What do you think about that? So I think having that collegiality is really helpful. And then certainly the the team is huge, like, I don't, I don't really get that in a lot of different parts of medicine, and certainly in in surgery, but I think that it's we really depend on each other. So we all, we all just work together, which is, which is really nice.

Nancy Barrow: 30:37

Yeah and when you have good outcomes, right? When, when the people come back to you and and you see that they've regained their life back after it must be really rewarding for you.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 30:48

It is. And I always like I see them that I worry most about my inpatient nurses, because they're not seeing them in the outpatient like when, when you see them across the street in the clinic, and you see them like returning to life and enjoying i I always ask them when they get to a certain point, like, do me a favor. Go go back to me and visit them. If it's not going to be too much of a trauma for you, because it would really mean a lot, you know, to those caretakers, and you know a lot of them do, and it's, it's wonderful, yeah, to see them regain their lives.

Nancy Barrow: 31:15

What would you like people to take away from this podcast I studied here?

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 31:19

I have an MPH myself. So I just really like, love the fact that you would be able to create the support of the paid leave, because I think it's incredibly important. I think that's the one thing to know about that, because it's a newer program that started in 2022 and then also, obviously, a lot of the prevention things that I had spoken about. And just that the burn center is a special place that we're resourced for the state and obviously many other states as well. So don't hesitate to call us if you if you need us, or have a question or need education. We've got, like a whole team of people doing a lot of different things that can can help so that, that, you know, we can help the burn patient, but also prevent the next patient from happening burn like I have had a patient that I knew as a seven year old that's now in his in his mid 20s, and I think as a as a surgeon, that's an unusual sort of longevity relationship that we have and and that individual is now giving back to my current patients, which is, which is kind of cool. So it's a really cool field that has a lot to offer.

Nancy Barrow: 32:22

Well, I want to thank my guest, doctor, Roselle Crombie, for taking time out of your very busy day to be a guest on the paid leave podcast. All good.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 32:30

And thank you for putting together the program that's amazing.

Nancy Barrow: 32:33

So it took a long time for this program to get up and and have Governor Ned Lamont make it a law that was passed in 2019 and it really is a rewarding program, as well as how you talk about your program. It, it, it's very rewarding knowing that we're helping people.

Dr. Roselle Crombie: 32:49

You are and it's, I love, the fact that you thought about not only just the person that was injured, but really the whole big picture. Because it is we all know that you know, we get family members that need, need or or caregivers or friends that you know, whoever is the significant others for these individuals need help too. So keep doing what you're doing, because I've listened to all your podcasts. I'm like,these are great people listen.

Nancy Barrow: 33:11

Thank you. Well for more information about burn prevention and information about the American Burn Association, you can go to their website@ameriburn.org And for information or to apply for benefits, please go to ctpaidleave.org This has been another edition of The Paid Leave Podcast. Please like and subscribe so you'll be notified about new podcasts that become available. Connecticut Paid Leave is a public act with a personal purpose. I'm Nancy Barrow, and thanks for listening.