In this episode, host Erin Croyle and guest Dr. Kathryn Rooth talk about just how much, or how little, medical professionals know about treating patients with disabilities.  Is there a topic you want to learn more about? Something you want to ask Dr. Rooth? Feel free to contact Erin via email.  

The Odyssey: Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. 

The Center for Family Involvement at VCU School of Education's Partnership for People with Disabilities provides informational and emotional support to people with disabilities and their families. All of our services are free. We just want to help. We know how hard this can be because we're in it with you. 

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

01:00:07 :20 - 01:00:37 :15

Erin Croyle

Welcome to The Odyssey. Parenting, Caregiving, Disability. I'm Erin Croyle. The creator and host of The Odyssey podcast explores the unique journey were sent on when a loved one has a disability. I started down this path more than a decade ago when my first child was born with Down's Syndrome. My journey weaved its way here, working with the Center for Family Involvement at VCU's, Partnership for People with Disabilities.

 

01:00:37 :17 - 01:01:10 :09

Erin Croyle

This podcast does a deep dive into the joys and hardships we face. We celebrate how amazing the odyssey of parenting, caregiving and disability is. While tackling the tough stuff to an unfortunate truth, many of us learn early on is how antiquated and ablest our health care systems can be when it comes to treating people with disabilities. Joining me today is Dr. Kathryn Rooth, board certified internist and pediatrician.

 

01:01:10 :11 - 01:01:19 :17

Erin Croyle

She's also a strong advocate for people with disabilities and a mother of three.

 

01:01:19 :19 - 01:01:25 :06

Erin Croyle

Kathryn, thank you so much for coming on. Can I call you Kathryn or should I call you Dr. Rooth?

 

01:01:25 :08 - 01:01:29 :20

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

ERIN Of course you can call me Kathryn. We're friends. Thank you for having me.

 

01:01:29 :21 - 01:01:43 :04

Erin Croyle

Thanks. Yes. Full disclosure, we're friends. But Kathryn is also just an authority on this, so I'm very excited to finally have you here. I want to start with your own journey. What made you want to become a doctor?

 

01:01:43 :06 - 01:02:06 :24

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

It's kind of cliche, but I wanted to help people. As I got older and was in college, I took an interest in children with developmental disabilities and really wanted to advocate for them. I had this job where I worked for an organization that tried to integrate kids into the Boys and Girls Club who had developmental disabilities. That was my job.

 

01:02:06 :24 - 01:02:23 :02

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

I really had no training, didn't know what I was doing as a college student, but I really recognized the need then and I took an interest then it kind of took off from there, like wanting to pursue something in the health care field and always kind of leaning towards becoming a doctor.

 

01:02:23 :04 - 01:02:37 :12

Erin Croyle

I'm curious because with my own personal experience, I feel like my whole life I was so segregated from people with disabilities. What do you think drew you to helping people with it?

 

01:02:37 :14 - 01:03:05 :01

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

I honestly, Erin, I don't know. I, I took psychology classes and so I kind of started learning about a lot of the developmental disabilities. And I thought it was very interesting and how underserved and vulnerable they were and really took an interest in that patient population that they kind of drove me in that direction. I wasn't sure if I was going to be a special ed teacher or something, but I wanted to do something with this population.

 

01:03:05 :01 - 01:03:19 :00

Erin Croyle

And for so many of us, our understanding of med school, residency and beyond comes from television like Gray's Anatomy. Or if you're as old as I am, E.R. and Scrubs. So what is the process actually like?

 

01:03:19 :02 - 01:03:46 :04

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

I mean, it's a long process. And first you have to get into medical school, which is incredibly hard. It took me on more than one occasion to apply to get in. And then once you're in, you do two years of lecture where you're in the classroom or you're doing a lot of basic sciences and chemistry pathology, and then your last two years, you're doing mostly rotations in different hospitals and clinics settings to kind of figure out what type of doctor you want to be, right?

 

01:03:46 :04 - 01:04:07 :16

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

Because in medical school you're just becoming a doctor. And then once you figure out what type of doctor, then you apply to a specific residency. So I wanted to be an internist and a pediatrician, which was a combined residency. So then you apply to residency programs and depending on what type of specialty determines how long that training is.

 

01:04:07 :16 - 01:04:30 :03

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

So mine was four years. So four years of medical school. Then you go through this very stressful match where you rank, where you want to go, and all the residency programs rank who they want, and then you kind of have this cluster and you hopefully get, you know, where you want it to go in your in your list, which I was fortunate to go to Baystate Medical Center and Springfield, Massachusetts.

 

01:04:30 :03 - 01:04:52 :03

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

And I had a wonderful experience. So and I was there for four years. But essentially back then it was 80 hour workweeks, often 30 hour shifts every fourth day on a lot of the inpatient rotations. So it was exhausting. You know, they talk about like a firehose coming at you of information and knowledge and learning. That's what it was.

 

01:04:52 :03 - 01:04:59 :13

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

It was just it was a great experience. I would do it again. I could not do it again. At this age, though.

 

01:04:59 :15 - 01:05:04 :06

Erin Croyle

I mean, you're in school for so long and there's so much to learn about the human body.

 

01:05:04 :08 - 01:05:05 :05

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

Yeah.

 

01:05:05 :07 - 01:05:11 :19

Erin Croyle

Where does disability fall into all of that? And more specifically, intellectual and developmental disabilities.

 

01:05:11 :21 - 01:05:30 :10

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

Right. So in medical school, I'm trying to think back it was a long time ago when I went to med school between 2004 and 2008. I don't recall very much at all, if any. No desk to my medical school, but I just think there was a lot of other priorities. I don't even want to say priorities, but just wasn't on the radar.

 

01:05:30 :11 - 01:05:56 :19

Dr. Kathryn Rooth

I'm not sure exactly in residency because I was a pediatrician, I did get a good exposure to developmental disabilities, and I also picked electives in genetics and developmental disability rotation. So I chose to have more exposure to that because I was interested in that in my internal medicine side, not not that much.

 

01:05:56 :21 - 01:06:24 :18

Erin Croyle

So I find it really interesting that you say that because, for example, growing up I was like a really healthy kid. I didn't even do annual well visits. I just did like vaccines and physicals. And as a young adult, the only medication I took was birth control. So my knowledge of anything and navigating medical systems was minimal. And then all of a sudden, as a first time mom, I have a child with Down syndrome.

 

01:06:24 :19 - 01:07:00 :01

Erin Croyle