Pub 5 2021 Issue1

T here is a good chance you have seen the names and faces of Dr. Dixie Harris and Dr. Jeanette Brown in the local news lately. That is due to the fact that these two outstanding physicians, who have both spent time at the front lines treating the most critically ill patients with COVID-19 over the past 15 months, and are also treating patients who continue to struggle with COVID-19; sometimes months after their initial symptoms began. This patient population, often referred to as “long haulers,” now have access to even more specialized care in Utah with the opening of the University of Utah Post-COVID Clinic and doctors and research scientists learning more and more everyday about how best to provide care. In the Thick of It from the Beginning Dr. Harris is a pulmonologist and critical care physician who also specializes in sleep medicine. While most of her work is done on an outpatient basis at Alta View Hospital in Sandy, Utah, she also performs intensive care (ICU) unit care at Utah Valley Hospital in Provo, Utah and works at the telehealth critical care unit providing support to the network of Intermountain hospitals and clinics throughout the region. In April 2020, Harris was part of a group of over 100 healthcare providers with Intermountain Healthcare who volunteered to travel to New York City to provide relief and assistance to overwhelmed providers dealing with a surge of very sick patients. Once there, Dr. Harris oversaw nights in an intensive care unit at Northwell Health’s Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, a suburb of New York City, where she pulled repeated 13-hour shifts. Dr. Jeanette Brown is an internal medicine physician and subspecializes in pulmonary and critical care and subsequently has gained considerable experience treating adult patients in the medical ICU. She also sub-specializes in chronic neuromuscular respiratory failure, so she has been treating critically ill COVID patients who need to be placed on a ventilator, but sees patients with COVID in nearly every phase of the illness. As the medical director for respiratory and complex care at the rehabilitation hospital at the University of Utah, she has been able to see patients that she treated in the ICU as they start on their path to recovery. Often times, she follows the complex cases as outpatients as well. When the Symptoms Just Will Not Go Away When Dr. Harris first returned to Utah from New York in the spring of 2020, she was seeing very few patients in the ICU. In the early months of the pandemic in Utah, she was primarily conducting pulmonary consults or conducting Post-COVID Care and the Role of Family Medicine Physicians By Barbara Muñoz Dr. Jeanette Brown is a pulmonary and critical care physician and assistant professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Dr. Dixie Harris is a pulmonary medicine and critical care physician with Intermountain Healthcare. [Listening and validating] this is what family docs do best. This skill set is critical, and the value of family docs has never been higher than now. Post-COVID Care | Continued on page 28 27 |

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