What is the takeaway then from your book? What are you hoping that a doctor would look at this and change, an administrator would look at this and change? And what do you hope a patient would get from reading this?

Yeah.

They're great questions.

So my experience with other colleagues now, and I should clarify, like Vanderbilt is a place where, Vanderbilt is a place where even as we're improving, you know, we've got work to do, but Vanderbilt is a place where we are oriented toward trauma-informed care and being attuned to problems like PTSD and dealing with patients compassionately.

I think we're really good at that, and I'm grateful to be part of that team, but But nobody's perfect, right? Like we're trying to improve.

But when I encounter physicians or for that matter, therapists, allied health professionals, nurses, I raise this issue of medical trauma.

And among physicians in particular, many of them are not really familiar with the term trauma.

Yeah,

But how did it all begin for you?

It's a really good question.

Um, you know, I have Vanderbilt undergraduates who are in our, our lab here at Vanderbilt, and, uh, often they ask me for career advice, and I wish that I could tell them that it's a linear process, right? Like, you set out down a straight path and, and, uh, you know how it's gonna work.

Um, in my life, that rarely has been how it happens.

Um, I came to Vanderbilt, uh, to do a psychology residency at a, at a place called the Vanderbilt VA Consortium, and during those days, uh, in 2000, there was a critical care researcher named Wes Ely, who was just starting a program focused on outcomes in ICU survivors, mental health outcomes, and he needed a psychologist, and I happened to be one.

And, um, we had a baby on the way, and I needed a job, and, uh, it was really that simple.

You know, I dipped my toe in the water, it felt fine, and then I jumped into the deep end and began to study specifically individuals who had been on a ventilator, on a respirator.

Uh, why did you write this book, first off?