The Retrievals

One of my CRNAs actually came to me during a lecture and during one of these lectures and he said, you know, And there's this podcast that kind of talks about everything you're talking about.

It's called The Retrievals.

And it was season one at the time.

And I said, oh, OK, I'll tell you.

In urgent emergencies, it's a little bit harder.

But, you know, if we know patients are at risk, we can have that conversation.

And so it also uncovered things like workflow, right? So funny story is I didn't get to hear any of the retrievals until it dropped.

So luckily I had a day off

Someone who has developed a deep understanding of this phenomenon of not listening to patients is journalist and producer Susan Burton.

Susan Burton is the host, writer, reporter, and co-producer of the Peabody Award-winning podcast, The Retrievals, from Serial Productions and The New York Times.

The Retrievals is a series about women undergoing IVF who did not receive the pain medicine that they should have.

We both organically discovered The Retrievals, and I think that the way I heard about it was this whispery buzz around the department, um, where people were talking about that they had listened to this podcast or listened to the first couple episodes and that everyone needed to listen to it if they were gonna be OBGYNs.

And it really captured the patient experience that perhaps we hadn't really talked about before.

Um, and I think for me in particular, it made me reflect on my training in OBGYN and how, as OBGYNs, we bear witness to a lot of pain.

I certainly think about times where, what if I'm one of those providers who isn't thinking enough about my patient's pain? And, you know, I'm sure I've done that before.

I'm sure that I have minimized people's pain or not, at least not given them permission to fully express their pain and to, to be uncomfortable.

I'm great, thanks.

What is The Retrievals?

Well, let me tell you, The Retrievals Season 2 is a podcast that came out just a few months ago.

It was produced by Serial Productions and The New York Times and hosted by Susan Burton.

And it's an absolutely gripping four-part series.

Yeah.

Yes.

So season one of the retrievals came out a few years ago, and it was about quite a similar issue, but it was about women who felt excruciating pain during egg retrievals as part of the IVF process.

And together we host the podcast Outlawed.

We're going to start this season off with a couple of interviews with folks who are experts about IUDs and pain, including Susan Burton, who is the host and producer for The Retrievals.

Patient after patient saying that they'd told their doctors they were in pain, that they'd been ignored, dismissed, not believed.

And also patient after patient saying...

And to that point, Laura, that if, if there is a knock that I have on this season, it's that the Dr.

Death stories and Exposed from Laura Beale and to some extent season one of The Retrievals, they start to feel a bit like they're blending into one another.

Because there is the recurring theme about, you know, how the system fails in the s- seems like almost the same way each time.

Now, the seasons themselves have varied, um, with sort of, like, the setup of, like, what kind of doctor and what they're doing.

My issue is that it is, it has a sameness to season one, the story.

I think there are a lot of...

I mean, one of the things that, uh, The Retrievals did is they, you know, took...

The, the two seasons are about two very different issues.