May 6, 2020

#SCBIpodcast: The art of negotiation and and family medicine in the time of COVID-19 with Dr. Nikolina Mizdrak

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Nikolina Mizdrak podcast

Last week on Small Changes, Big Impact podcast, we had Dr. Nikolina Mizdrak, a family physician at the Toronto Western Family Health Team, a physician member of the negotiating team for the OMA since 2017, and an associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. Today's episode focuses on the art of negotiation and important role the OMA plays in providing care to all patients. 

Transcript:

Dr. Mizdrak: (00:40)
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Dr. Rezmovitz: (00:44)
So let's get right into things. How are you coping with COVID-19?

Dr. Mizdrak: (00:52)
Well, I'm going a little bit stir-crazy. The house is in shambles and as I tell my husband, I can get through COVID anything, but homeschooling is killing me. How about you?

Dr. Rezmovitz: (01:04)
Oh, listen - I will tell you straight up, I'm very, very lucky and privileged to have what I have. I have a healthy wife. I have four healthy kids. They are being homeschooled. I have a job. I'm very lucky and I'm very grateful to still be able to take part in people's lives. There are obviously challenges. There are many challenges that we face as family doctors, as humans, as parents, as a father. But I have to tell you that I really - I'm probably one of the lucky ones.

Dr. Mizdrak: (01:45)
But were you fired by your children for trying to teach them long division by any chance?

Dr. Rezmovitz: (01:50)
When you say fired [inaudible] - we've already had three out of the four kids cry this morning -

Dr. Mizdrak: (01:58)
Exactly.

Dr. Rezmovitz: (01:58)
And we've already been outside for some of our physical activity and we've already had an accident this morning.

Dr. Mizdrak: (02:05)
Yeah. My children have pretty much said, "you know, mommy, I think we're going to ask daddy for help from now on."

Dr. Rezmovitz: (02:14)
Listen, some of us have strengths, right? And the key is to try to use those strengths to achieve certain goals. And I don't think when you woke up that day - whatever it was, it probably wasn't this morning - but I don't think your goal was to do long division.

Dr. Mizdrak: (02:31)
Yeah.

Dr. Rezmovitz: (02:32)
And so you got to find a way to like reframe. Even these kids, they just need support. And maybe you're like me, maybe you're completely on the other end of the spectrum here, but I really don't care about school. I've got young kids and they'll learn it. Their teachers will have them bring it back up at some point. They will learn it. As much as they - your kid - if you look at a micro system, your kid in the system is not advancing very much and not learning very much, but nobody is. [inaudible] So they'll all have to learn it.

Dr. Mizdrak: (03:08)
Yeah. I guess my circus performance school here at the house will have some benefits in the future, I'm sure but-

Dr. Rezmovitz: (03:15)
Are you guys doing circus? 'Cause we are. [inaudible].

Dr. Mizdrak: (03:20)
It just looks like a circus.

Dr. Rezmovitz: (03:20)
Oh, okay. We've been doing a ton of physical feats. We kind of try to come up with a new trick every day. So I've got my one-year-old upside down. She's been on the back of every single one of my kids. We've been working on handstands and you know, trying different circus stuff. You should see them on the couch. It's like a safety net.

Dr. Mizdrak: (03:45)
Well, I'll see what mine can do and maybe I'll share some of that later.

Dr. Rezmovitz: (03:49)
Okay. So tell me how - let's go professional then.

Dr. Mizdrak: (03:54)
Sure.

Dr. Rezmovitz: (03:55)
How is work?

Dr. Mizdrak: (03:57)
Work is good. I'm one of those people who is very privileged to be able to still work. Our unit has divided our physician in teams. We've converted to mostly virtual care. We're still giving after hours care, weekend care, daily care, but our teams are divided between supervising residents, being in clinic versus being remote at home. So we have a whole system to protect the team. And I'm also in negotiations right now with the Ministry, so that's taken a bunch of my time as well. And I also work at the COVID assessment unit at our hospital. So I think I would say I was busy, but I'm happily busy.

Read the full transcript on our website here.