>> So my name is Bryan Jackson and I'm a pediatric critical care doctor at the University
of Colorado and Children's Hospital of Colorado.
And so my days are split.
Some days I am working at a clinical doctor in the ICU at the hospital.
Other days I am doing more education and research on the academic side at the university.
So one of the things I remember from my training that drew me
to pediatrics is you'd spend a month in the adult hospital with a lot of adults
who don't have that same motivation to get better.
They'd rather wallow and sit in their bed and not put any effort into getting out of bed
and walking around because it hurts.
Whereas kids are like, "No.
I want to get better," even if it hurts.
They want to get out of their bed and walking around the hospital
and seeing all the things that they are to see.
So I actually majored in religious studies at Pomona and then went on to medical school
at George Washington University in Washington DC.
And then, after medical school, that was where I decided to do pediatrics.
I still wasn't sure beyond pediatrics what I wanted to do.
After medical school, to become a pediatric ICU doc you do three years of pediatric residency
and then three years of ICU fellowship.
So it's six years after medical school.
And I did all that in Colorado at the University of Colorado.
And I decided during residency that I just like the whole body physiology that you see
in the ICU that you don't see so much in a lot of other specialties.
So I think it's really important to be well rounded and be able to communicate
with your patients about a lot of things that aren't medical.
A lot of my time in the room is spent talking about things that have nothing to do
with the physiology or medications or ventilator in that patient's room.
It's talking to families about what's important to them, what it looks like for their kid
to get better and for their kid to go home.
Or, in bad cases, what it looks like for their child to die in a way that is the best
of a bad situation for that family.
And so I think it's important to have that background in a lot of different subjects.
I think liberal arts is helpful for that.
So I think it's -- get a lot of clinical experience and make sure
that it's something you really want to do because it's a long,
arduous process to go through all the training.
And so start that clinical experience as early as possible, but, at the same time,
maintain a lot of interests that aren't medicine because I think having
that well-rounded experience is essential to being a good doctor.