Dr. Natasha DeSousa, the chief of staff at Mills Memorial Hospital and an emergency room physician in its ER department, has been selected as a fellow in the University of British Columbia (UBC) - Brigham and Women’s Hospital Emergency Leadership Fellowship program.
Dr. DeSousa has worked in emergency medicine for more than a decade and has held a variety of leadership roles.
The fellowship is designed to “develop healthcare leaders from BC who will become experts in emergency care delivery both at the institutional and system or regional levels through a combination of practice, finance, and management education, collaboration, and personal development” according to the university.
“This fellowship is a unique opportunity to develop leadership skills that will serve our rural and northern populations. I look forward to strengthening my ability to navigate relationships between rural and urban partners in caring for acutely unwell patients,” DeSousa said.
DeSousa is affiliated with the department of emergency medicine of UBC where she teaches medical students and residents and conducts workshops and training programs. The program has only had a handful of fellows thus far.
“Healthcare and emergency medicine have undergone huge changes in the last five years, and a lot of us are finding ourselves as physicians in leadership but we don’t have that training as we go through medical school,” she said.
She stressed the importance of seeing oneself in the context of the hospital and the community rather than just the emergency. She thinks it is important to relate with other sectors such as housing or policing, and acknowledge how the hospital fits into the bigger picture.
“I am really passionate about ensuring that everybody in this province, including people who live in rural and remote areas, get a basic standard of acute care,” she said.
DeSousa was “shocked and surprised and gobsmacked” when she won the fellowship. She did not expect somebody who lives in a rural place would win the prize, especially because the last few fellows were from “very urban” places. She is touched that people are interested in a rural perspective and want to do right for rural medicine.
She was grateful for the support she received from her colleagues and her husband who is a general surgeon at Mills Memorial.
“I wasn’t reluctant but I didn’t think that I had a chance to win it, but he was really encouraging of recognizing how much I have come to care about this hospital and this system,” she added.
DeSousa has struggled to balance her professional and personal life since she had her first child. Continuing to be the physician lead of the emergency department and adding the fellowship along with having a family is challenging.
Though it is tricky, she tries to outsource a lot of her domestic activities and limit her work hours so she can accommodate the increased requirements of the fellowship responsibilities.
She is fascinated about learning “change management” especially in today’s age in which health care is different than it ever has been.
“When I finished my training fourteen years ago, it would not have prepared me in any way with what I do today,” she said.
Furthermore, she is excited about learning “quality improvement” and maintaining a high level of skill in a place that has low frequency of high acuity events. She also looks forward to learning “operations” and to work at a system level to maximize patients’ outcomes.
Getting her inspiration from working with the people who have been dedicated to their community for 26 years and who have served patients with very limited resources, she feels more physicians would like to come to the Northwest if they felt they had a group of physicians who were committed to advocating for their patients.
Touching on gender issues, DeSousa highlighted the stereotypes and gender bias that exists in the healthcare arena. She did not notice it when she went through medical school and applied to emergency medicine or when she worked on the floor but as she is progressing into leadership, she is noticing the gender challenges.
“The world has a lot of expectations in today’s new age about how a woman should behave and what they should do, and what they go into, and I think it’s really important that women follow their heart and follow their mind and do things that make them feel passionate and excited,” She said.
She thinks it’s challenging to be a woman in leadership and hopes to one day be an inspiration to other women who want to participate in leadership. Some of the women who have encouraged Natasha include Dr. Becky Temple and Dr. Andrea Geller from Northern Health and Dr. Maggie Watt from UBC.
“When I was growing up, my dad always encouraged me to not have any boundaries,” DeSousa said.