Perspectives From A Christian Medical Doctor with Jeffrey B. Geske, M.D. – Transcript

00:21hi welcome to our show today our guest is dr jeff geske dr jeffrey geske is an academic cardiologist and practicing physician in the department of cardiovascular medicine at mayo clinic dr geske's research focuses on patients with structural heart disease such as valvular heart disease and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy he's an md medical doctor

00:48with formal training in internal medicine cardiology and multi-modality imaging he is board certified in cardiology and echocardiography dr geske has written more than 140 publications and recently was promoted to professor of medicine he is the course director for the mayo clinic alex school of medicine cardiology course and is co-director of the mayo clinic cardiovascular board

01:17review outside of work jeff enjoys collecting and playing vintage video games he's married with three daughters he's also my brother thanks for joining us today i think the best accomplishment you saved for last there because we both had so much to do with that yeah let's let's start with a little icebreaker um and you like that you've

01:43played video games as long as i've known you what's what's a recent video game that you've been playing and that you have enjoyed well i actually recently picked up a used pinball machine it's a terminator 2 pinball game and i found it in a barn it was not working it was in pretty rough shape but with some help i've replaced a bunch of the parts

02:10replated the ramps had all the rubber had rotted a battery had exploded in it uh kind of put some uh sweat equity some work into it and now it's up and running and it has really been fun not only playing it now that it's up and running but also seeing kind of all the inner workings and and uh putting in the effort to restore it a bit i was never really very good at pinball growing up we didn't really have a

02:37pinball machine or anything like that and i whenever i would put some money in a machine i wouldn't last that long but it's been kind of fun having my own i'm getting a little bit better but i would still say that my oldest daughter has the household high score so i i i'm not yet surpassing her awesome um okay well share with us a little bit about your background that's maybe more than the academic and

03:06all right i i could probably focus on games the whole time but i think that's a that's a good idea i i grew up in a pentecostal christian home uh my parents were both very strong in their faith and i think they set a great example for both myself and my older sister ever since being a small child i had an interest in medicine although being a christian is central to

03:32who i am i never really felt a calling to become a pastor or a missionary and at many points in my education and training it's been really apparent that becoming a medical doctor is the path that god has put aside for me so after completing my undergraduate studies at the university of minnesota i went to medical school at mayo clinic that's a four-year program to receive my medical doctorate and then after you get

03:59your medical doctorate even though you're an md you really need additional training to become good at caring for patients so i went through three years of internal medicine residency and then after that a total of four and a half years that was spent in cardiology fellowship and advanced cardiac imaging fellowships once i completed that training i've been on staff as a cardiologist at mayo clinic for more than six years and

04:26as you said my emphasis is really on structural heart disease in particular this hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and i really enjoy medical education as well doctor when you were growing up how did your family deal with the intersection of science and faith you know um it's it's been interesting growing up everyone was an engineer

04:53and you know i'm looking at an aerospace engineer with my sister my my father is a mechanical engineer and it seems like everyone all the uncles it's not like what do you do it's like what branch of engineering do you specialize in and you know before going to medical school i i actually worked in a biomedical engineering capacity at medtronic so i had kind of thought about diving into that role so

05:20i've been surrounded by science all throughout growing up it was a really important part of of my education and and my childhood it was it was everywhere and similarly my christian faith and christian values have always been a part of who i am i was blessed to grow up in a christian home and have such great role models so i don't really see those as conflicting at all and i'd say really the more i learn

05:46about the intricate complexities of biology and human physiology i see the role of a creator there it's important for christians to know that exploring science and using scientific principles is healthy i don't think that god wants us to be naive to the incredible things he has created and faith does not mean shunning science

06:13yeah um so so when you were going into medical training um did you ever have a crisis of faith or or question your belief in god yeah you know i i think it's healthy to evaluate your beliefs and your faith so i think i could say yes and be truthful to that i do not consider my christian beliefs

06:38to be a blind faith in that i don't believe what i do simply because it's what i heard in sunday school growing up or because it's what my parents or my sister believes so when i've questioned my faith i have found that it withstands those questions becoming a physician requires an incredibly long training pathway and you know as i've gone through studying for standardized exams or approaching a

07:0530-hour shift i have found that my faith is really helpful to me i use a prayer during tough times to find peace and while medical knowledge is vast and ever-changing and can be really intimidating i know that i work hard to stay up to date on medicine but i also prayerfully seek guidance from god for the decisions that i make both in my career and for the care of patients

07:32what role do you find that prayer has in in the medical field yeah i think that i believe prayer matters my prayer is central to my faith it's something that i that i do daily it's something that connects me with god and i believe that christians should pray for healing but with that said i don't think that prayer replaces the need for medical

08:01care nor should it cause us to doubt that science and modern medicine are able to help with health so again i i don't see the two at odds or opposing i think that they work together do you share your faith directly with your patients well that depends um my primary goal

08:27when i am in the role of physician is to put the needs of the patient first and to provide excellent medical care often that does not directly involve me sharing my christian beliefs i i want to be an example of living for god but it may not mean that i advertise those beliefs in the patient care setting i will say if a patient asked me to pray for them i certainly would be happy to do that

08:56so before we discuss certain medical topics can you clarify the difference between recommending best practice best medical practices and giving patient specific medical advice yeah so i think that's it's a great question and uh first off i'd say in our discussions today that these answers are my own i haven't been prompted to give certain answers uh the answers i give are mine and not

09:24that of my employer or specific organization i don't believe that i have any conflicts in in our interview today and your question brings up a really important point as a physician i see patients regularly and whether it's in the hospital or the clinic i have access to their medical information i take a history perform an exam i review their medical testing and with all that data

09:49in hand i provide guidance based on medical guidelines and we use shared decision making to determine the correct next steps for medical care the patient physician relationship really individualizes patient care and that's different than a general discussion of medical topics thankfully we have guidelines in expert groups such as the national institute of health the center for disease control that help

10:16us to provide best practice recommendations that apply more broadly to a majority of people i think in general when you're asking questions today my answers would fall more along the lines of the ladder there in that i'm not reviewing each of your medical charts and providing specific diagnosis and treatment recommendations do you care for patients uh with covid19

10:40and are you an expert in that area so as a as a practicing medical physician i certainly do care for patients with covet 19. it's a real disease kovit has affected many aspects of my job i'm grateful that i have friends and colleagues who work in infectious diseases cardiology is my specialty so i'm a heart doctor

11:07not an infectious disease specific expert but i would say that understanding how covid can affect health especially cardiovascular health is important to me since i care for patients so we are more than a year and a half into this global cova 19 pandemic as a

11:31cardiologist how has the pandemic impacted your practice a lot of ways i think um that's the that's the short answer is a lot of ways i've seen a lot of different impacts from kovid um perhaps an obvious one is that now when i'm interacting with patients both my patients and i wear masks and i honestly don't really mind wearing a mask i might have to use an extra breath mint

11:59every once in a while but but other than that but for patients who are hard of hearing and rely on some amount of lip reading wearing a mask can be tough and so that's been an interaction that's really changed i i'd say as well that covet has really stretched a lot of medical resources for example there have been some times where patients need heart surgeries on an elective basis and there are fewer

12:26operative slots available where we've had to cut back on our operating volume because of the pandemic and hospital utilization has been very high lately i just spent some time on hospital service and the hospitals across minnesota are very full are there cardiac effects of covid yes um

12:52covet can directly affect the heart it can cause an inflammatory process of heart muscle that the medical term for that is myocarditis and myocarditis can weaken the heart's pump function perhaps more often than seeing a direct effect on the heart of myocarditis we can see covet affect the lungs or cause systemic

13:18inflammation and that can then influence overall heart health patients with underlying cardiac conditions may develop weakening of their heart or heart failure because of difficulty of pumping blood through the lungs when the lungs are inflamed and infected another important thing that's maybe a less direct or a more indirect effect of covid that i've really noticed is the