Dr. Dylan Blacquiere is a stroke neurologist at The Ottawa Hospital Neurology Ward’s Neurovascular Unit. Some of his roles include acute stroke therapy, and stroke education among undergraduate, medical resident, and fellowship students.
"The thing that got me to become a neurologist in the first place was the very first neurology rotation we had, — we saw a patient in the stroke unit with a very specific stroke syndrome called alexia without agraphia; that meant that the patient could write, but could not read anything, even what she herself had written. It fascinated me that someone could have a condition so specific, so essentially devastating, yet we were trying to undo and work towards the rehabilitation and prevention of problems for her. I chose my career path within that day, and ever since then, I never looked back.
There was one case we had with a teenager who suffered from a stroke, on whom we had to use therapy which was not necessarily proven effective for her age group — a method completely extrapolated from data on adult patients. Fortunately, it turned her situation around and she recovered from paralysis and went from bedridden to just missing a week of school. While this was one of my challenging successes, you can’t have those without a handful of failures.
In fact, while it seemed straightforward enough — a recent patient suffering from stroke came in, we discussed benefits of therapy, and afterwards, while there was no obvious reason — she suddenly decompensated and suffered from a hemorrhage from the clot buster we administered. Unfortunately, this individual did not recover, and died. These two instances together, are what remind us as physicians that our treatments can go either way. It reminds us that our successes could just as easily become our failures, and in the end, we just need to take that leap of faith and hope our actions are the right ones.
Much of my current role revolves around the educational point of view of strokes, and I strive to help develop and bridge the gaps between academic centers like those at universities, and non-academic centers out in the community, which are still going to see patients with acute strokes, but don’t necessarily have the resources, backing, or physicians with specialization to deal with such patients. I’d like to be able to help bridge that gap between the specialized and the less-specialized in the rural and peripheral regions, to help improve overall stroke care.
One of the things we see a lot with families of patients is that there are always questions that demand answers, such as what a stroke is, or what happens after the patient’s recovery, or how to prevent future strokes from occurring. I think there is room for somebody to write resources, or provide information to people in that sense, which would be really helpful to a lot of people to make better decisions for themselves and family members.
Something I’ve noticed, especially among physicians, is their method of communication with patients in a language they can understand and taking into account their educational backgrounds and experiences in the subject at hand. If I could change one thing about today’s healthcare system, I’d like to see healthcare workers and professionals build their communication skills among each other and community members. Sometimes I wonder if I could have been any clearer with my own patients, and in situations like these, additional resources and patient reminders can make all the difference. Teaching people how to manage such resources, I think, would be of benefit to them in bridging that gap between patients seeing their healthcare provider and administering self-care."
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