Life Changers - Kathryn Maitland

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2015

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kathryn Maitland is a doctor with a burning passion to transform clinical research across Africa, where she has spent most of her career. Determined to improve the outcomes for critically sick children in hospital, she spent over a decade of her life raising funds for and then carrying out, the first ever scientific trial for fluid bolus resuscitation in children with shock. Fluid replacement is a pillar of medicine but the evidence base for this particular issue is weak, even though it is standard practice for hospitals in high-income countries. The results were totally unexpected, creating a shockwave in the medical community that is yet to settle down. Kathryn believes the results could save tens of thousands of lives every year in Africa alone yet the experience very nearly ended her research career. She tells her life-changing story to Kevin Fong, himself a critical care doctor, who wonders if his own current practice of treating sick children should now change.

(Image: presenter Kevin Fong with Kathryn Maitland)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you're all with discovery on the BBC.
0:03.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to BBCworldservice.com
0:09.0	slash podcasts.
0:25.1	You're with Discovery on broadcasts. life changes. Over the next four programs I'll be talking to people whose pursuit of science has changed their lives and the lives of others. Meet Catherine
0:30.6	Maitland, a doctor based in East Africa who specializes in the care of critically sick children.
0:37.0	One night she received a call about a huge research project that she'd been working on for years that would change her career forever.
0:45.2	I got a phone call and I thought this is it. They said we're going to recommend that your trial is to stop and it's because
0:52.1	it is not safe for you to continue the trial.
0:54.8	And the only thing that I could think about was I have persuaded doctors in six hospitals
1:00.4	to give a therapy that they weren't giving and now I've caused harm to children in
1:05.2	their communities. I will never do research again. I will never be able to show my
1:09.4	face to the doctors in those communities. I felt absolutely devastated.
1:14.0	Dr Catherine Maitland talking about receiving the news no doctor ever wants to hear,
1:20.0	that their research trial has failed and that worse still it may have cost lives.
1:25.2	And yet what followed would change the way that clinicians working in low-income countries
1:29.9	have come to treat critically ill children and challenge some of our most basic assumptions
1:35.6	about how we resuscitate our patients.
1:38.8	It was, by her own admission, one of the most difficult times in her whole life.
1:43.0	But for Catherine, being a doctor working with children
1:46.0	in some of the world's most deprived areas
1:48.0	is where she'd always wanted to be.
1:51.0	I remember one of my first visits to the doctors and I came away thinking
	...

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