Season 2 of "The Retrievals" Seeks Solutions to Women's Surgical Pain

Summary

All Of It – Season 2 of "The Retrievals" Seeks Solutions to Women's Surgical Pain

Host: Alison Stewart
Guest: Susan Burton, Journalist and Podcaster, Host of "The Retrievals"
Release Date: July 14, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of All Of It, hosted by Alison Stewart, the spotlight shines on Season 2 of the award-winning podcast "The Retrievals." Susan Burton, the journalist and podcaster behind "The Retrievals," joins Alison to delve into the profound and often overlooked issue of severe pain experienced by women during cesarean sections (C-sections). The conversation navigates through personal narratives, medical practices, systemic challenges, and the quest for meaningful solutions.

Overview of "The Retrievals" Season 2

"The Retrievals" Season 2 marks a significant shift from its inaugural season, which exposed the harrowing experiences of women at a Yale fertility clinic where medications were stolen by a nurse, leaving patients in extreme pain. Season 2 broadens its investigative lens to explore the excruciating pain endured by women during C-sections and the systemic neglect that often accompanies their pleas for relief.

Susan Burton explains the transition to Season 2:

"The focus of these four episodes is not just that severe pain is a problem, but that people are trying to solve it" (02:57).

Key Topics Discussed

1. Pain During C-Sections: Experiences and Statistics

A central theme of the podcast is the variability and intensity of pain experienced during C-sections. While spinal blocks and epidurals are standard practices intended to mitigate pain, they sometimes fail, leaving patients in agonizing discomfort.

Susan Burton highlights the rarity and gravity of the issue:

"There's no other major surgery where 8% of patients feel significant pain during cesarean. There's no other major surgery where this happens" (06:00).

2. Impact of Untreated Pain on Patients

The repercussions of unmanaged pain extend far beyond the immediate surgical experience. Patients often grapple with long-term psychological trauma, including PTSD, which can haunt them for years.

Susan Burton emphasizes the prolonged impact:

"There's a lot of research on birth trauma and PTSD symptoms... the birthday of your own child can become a nightmare in a way" (06:25).

3. Changes in Operating Room Dynamics

Effective pain management during surgery isn't solely about administering the right medication; it's also about the interpersonal dynamics within the operating room. The ability of any team member to voice concerns is crucial for patient safety and care quality.

Susan Burton discusses the cultural shift:

"One of the most important changes... is there's now a culture where really, anyone in the room can say, stop. I have a concern" (09:44).

4. Dr. Heather Nixon's Role and Initiatives

Dr. Heather Nixon, head of obstetric anesthesia at UI Health Hospital in Chicago, emerges as a pivotal figure in addressing this crisis. Her dedication to ensuring that no patient endures untreated pain has led to significant departmental and systemic changes.

Susan Burton introduces Dr. Nixon's mission:

"Heather was determined to make sure that this couldn't happen again" (04:58).

5. Susannah Stanford's Advocacy

Susannah Stanford's personal traumatic experience with a painful C-section propelled her into advocacy. Her efforts have been instrumental in implementing systemic guidance in the UK, aimed at improving pain management during C-sections.

Susan Burton details Susannah's contributions:

"She set out to try to address this problem... she is partially responsible for implementing systemic guidance in the UK" (25:09).

6. Racial Disparities in Pain Management

The podcast touches upon the unsettling statistics that reveal racial disparities in pain management during C-sections. A study highlighted within the episode found that Black patients were five times more likely than white patients to report pain during C-sections.

Susan Burton sheds light on this inequity:

"Black patients were five times more likely than white patients to report pain during cesarean" (22:14).

Audience Participation: Listener Calls

In an engaging segment, the show features personal accounts from listeners who have experienced or witnessed pain during C-sections.

• Elizabeth from Brooklyn recounts her traumatic C-section experience where her pain was dismissed, leading to lasting emotional scars (15:29).
• Deborah from Park Ridge, New Jersey shares contrasting experiences of two C-sections—one handled compassionately and another where her pain was ignored (17:26).

Challenges in Addressing the Issue

The conversation reveals several obstacles in mitigating pain during C-sections:

• Communication Barriers: Patients often hesitate to voice their pain during surgery due to fear of disrupting the medical process.
• Team Dynamics: Hierarchical structures can prevent less senior staff from challenging decisions, hindering timely interventions.
• Lack of Awareness: Many healthcare providers are unaware of the prevalence and severity of pain during C-sections, contributing to its normalization.

Susan Burton underscores the need for cultural shifts:

"Healthcare providers don't want patients to be in pain... it's crazy that that was written [in 2006], but it's wonderful that people are doing something about it now" (26:35).

Solutions and Initiatives Implemented

Dr. Heather Nixon's efforts have led to concrete changes within her institution:

• Pain Scoring and Documentation: Anesthesiologists are now prompted at regular intervals to assess and document patients' pain levels, allowing for timely interventions.

  Susan Burton explains the significance:

  "It gives the patient an opportunity to speak up about pain... because there are a lot of reasons patients may not speak up" (23:44).

• Empowering Team Members: Encouraging a culture where any team member can voice concerns about a patient's well-being without fear of retribution.

• Training and Education: Implementing training programs to help healthcare providers navigate complex dynamics and prioritize patient pain management.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The episode of All Of It brings to light a crucial and often neglected aspect of women's healthcare. Through rigorous journalism and personal narratives, Susan Burton's "The Retrievals" Season 2 not only uncovers the depths of the problem but also highlights the tireless efforts of individuals striving to effect change. The discussion underscores the importance of empathy, effective communication, and systemic reforms in ensuring that no woman endures unnecessary pain during childbirth.

Susan Burton leaves listeners with a poignant message:

"Pain during cesarean is a problem, but there are things people can do about it. Most C sections, the pain is tolerable and limited to certain parts of the surgery" (28:59).

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Susan Burton (02:57): "The focus of these four episodes is not just that severe pain is a problem, but that people are trying to solve it."

• Susan Burton (06:00): "There's no other major surgery where 8% of patients feel significant pain during cesarean. There's no other major surgery where this happens."

• Susan Burton (09:44): "One of the most important changes... is there's now a culture where really, anyone in the room can say, stop. I have a concern."

• Susan Burton (22:14): "Black patients were five times more likely than white patients to report pain during cesarean."

• Susan Burton (28:59): "Pain during cesarean is a problem, but there are things people can do about it. Most C sections, the pain is tolerable and limited to certain parts of the surgery."

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This thorough exploration of "The Retrievals" Season 2 on All Of It not only informs but also compels listeners to advocate for better pain management practices in obstetric care. By sharing real stories and expert insights, the episode serves as a catalyst for change in a critical aspect of maternal health.

Transcript

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, Larry Fink has been called one of the last great humanist photographers. Now he is the subject of an exhibition at the center for Photography at Woodstock. Curator Lucy Santi joins us to discuss the show and the impact and the the importance of Fink's work. Journalist Danny Funt will be here to talk about how sports betting has changed the culture of fandom and altered the experience of being a professional athlete. And we'll kick things off with our week long series of things to do in all five boroughs. We start with Queens. Get ready to call in and share your love about the world's borough. That's our plan. So let's get this started with a preview of the second season of the award winning podcast, the Retrievals. The first season of the Retrievals uncovered a chilling story. Women at a Yale fertility clinic left screaming in pain when their medications were stolen by a nurse. Now it's taking on something even more widespread and routinely overlooked the excruciating pain someone experienced during C sections. C sections can be life saving, but epidurals and spinal blocks don't always work. They can fail. And when they do, doctors and medical staff often are not responsive and pleas for help can go ignored. Season two centers around Clara, a labor and delivery nurse at UIC Hospital in Chicago. And this happened to her when she was pregnant. Through voices like Clara, clinicians like Dr. Heather Nixon, and advocates like Susan Stanford, the podcast explores what it takes to push for doctors to change medical guideline. All episodes of the podcast are out now. Susan Burton is the host of the Retrievals and she joins me now in studio. It is nice to see you.

[Susan Burton]

Thank you, Alison, for having me.

[Alison Stewart]

Listeners, we'd like to get you in on this conversation. Are you an obstetric anesthesiologist? Let me try that again. Obstetric anesthesiologist, Is there anything you can help that you can find helpful in communicating with your C section patients who are in potential pain or listeners? Have you experienced pain during a C section? We would love for you to briefly tell us your experience. We do want to remind you please do not call from a car if you're driving. That's very important for safety. But we would like to hear from you. Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC or you can reach out via social media. OliveTwnyc. What first drew you to telling this story?

[Susan Burton]

So after season one of the retrievals, I received hundreds of emails from patients describing their own experiences of ignored or inadequately treated pain. And some of the most disturbing emails were from patients who said they felt everything during their C sections, felt a scalpel in the flesh, felt an organ being moved around. So I started looking into why was this happening, how often was it happening, and importantly, what people are doing to solve it. That's really the focus of these four episodes, is not just that severe pain is a problem, but that people are trying to solve it.

[Alison Stewart]

Were you looking for your next season already?

[Lucy Santi]

Did you have other things up in the air? And this one just took precedent.

[Susan Burton]

I didn't make season one knowing that there would be a season two. So, you know, as I was getting these listener emails, I was also doing a lot of interviews about season one. And one of the questions I was often asked was, so what are the solutions to this problem in medicine of dismissing women's pain? And, you know, I didn't have a good answer. I'd reported a lot on what went wrong, but reporting on what went wrong doesn't automatically translate to solutions on how to make it right. So pain during Caesarean turned out to be a wonderful case study that married these two questions. Why is this happening and what are people doing to solve it? And some of the lessons here apply not just to pain during cesarean, but to this problem writ large.

[Lucy Santi]

Was there one case in particular that caught your attention?

[Susan Burton]

It took me a while to find my way to the case that's at the center of the podcast of Clara. So this is a case at UI Health Hospital, a division of University of Illinois Chicago. And there's a doctor there who's the head of obstetric animal anesthesiology named Heather Nixon. And Clara is a nurse on the labor and delivery unit. Clara had a very painful C section, and Heather was determined to make sure that this couldn't happen again. And she began speaking about Clara's case. And one thing led to another. I met Heather. I learned of her speech, and the story unfolded from there.

[Lucy Santi]

Let's talk about generally, and then we'll talk about specifics. What does a woman feel when a spinal block fails or the proper anesthesia isn't given?

[Susan Burton]

So the sensation a patient feels can vary, Right? So that's true even if your block is working, and that's true if your block is not working. Some patients I spoke to did feel a Scalpel in the flesh. One of them very memorably describes it in the podcast as the feeling of she felt like she was a beanbag being opened up. I would say that most patients who feel significant pain during cesarean tend to feel it later in the surgery, and that's because the. The. The spinals and epidurals don't always block the pain from deep inside the abdomen as well as they block pain on the skin.

[Lucy Santi]

As you were comparing C sections with other surgeries, do other types of surgeries have the same percentage of people reporting pain?

[Susan Burton]

No, this is highly unusual. There's no other major surgery where 8% of patients, which is the figure I've landed on as the best available estimate of how many patients feel significant pain during cesarean. There's no other major surgery where this happens.

[Lucy Santi]

How does pain during a cesarean section impact life afterwards?

[Susan Burton]

I mean, that's such an important question, but because the thing is, this pain isn't just a problem for the few minutes after the surgery. It can affect patients for years. You know, there's a lot of research on birth trauma and PTSD symptoms. You know, I talked to patients who were still struggling with this years after the births of their children. There's a trauma expert in the podcast, you know, who says something, a detail that's just really memorable to me. You know, the birthday of your own child can become a nightmare in a way. Right. Because it brings you back to the trauma.

[Alison Stewart]

So that's really interesting.

[Susan Burton]

Yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

When you were making your list of people that you wanted to talk to for the podcast, who was on that list?

[Susan Burton]

I really wanted to talk to healthcare providers who were in the room during these surgeries. Season one focused primarily on the experience of patients. It was an emotional investigation into that experience, and I really wanted, as much as possible to understand what was going on for healthcare providers themselves.

[Alison Stewart]

My guest is journalist and podcaster Susan Burton, the host of the Retrievals. This season is about C sections. It's from Serial Productions, by the way, and the New York Times. It's a deeply reported series and investigates why so many women experience severe pain during C sections and why their pain is so often dismissed. Has anything like this happened to you? We'd like to hear about it. Our Phone number is 212-433-WNY 212-433-9692. Clara's story is amazing because she is a delivery nurse. She works in labor in a big hospital in a big city. She's pregnant with twins and is scheduled for an evening induction at the hospital she works at and she arrives. First of all, what went wrong?

[Susan Burton]

I mean, so there are a couple ways to answer this question, right? There's a way to really break the surgery down and say, you know, at this moment when this drug was given, maybe a better choice would have been to give this drug. But I think the big picture is that Clara said she was in pain, and the pain was not treated. And that is the most important thing to remember when a patient is experiencing pain during cesarean. It doesn't completely matter why the pain is happening. What's important is that you treat it.

[Alison Stewart]

There are a lot of people in the room when this happens. You had the OB surgeons, the surgical assistant, labor and delivery nurses, the pediatric newborn teams, the anesthesiologist. All of these people are co workers, and they're supposed to be working together. Yet it seemed like no one. And some of the people who were her friends, actually, no one seemed to stop when she said she was in pain. Do we understand why?

[Susan Burton]

I think that's such an important thing to point to is how the. It's not just, you know, the drugs and the epidurals and the spinals that make a difference, but it's the dynamics in the operating room. And one of the most important changes to come about after this incident at this hospital is there's now a culture where really, anyone in the room can say, stop. I have a concern. This patient doesn't seem to be okay.

[Lucy Santi]

It's interesting. This is a little bit of a tangent. I had a C section.

[Susan Burton]

Yeah.

[Lucy Santi]

And I had the most amazing doctor, great woman.

[Alison Stewart]

And I do remember this. Two things she said. One, she said, I think we should do it because the A team is here. We should do it now. Which leads me to two questions for you. First of all, is it a gendered experience having a female doctor versus a male doctor? Did you find that in your reporting?

[Susan Burton]

It's so interesting. You know, I do get this question a lot. Does it make a difference whether you have a male or female doctor? I don't know of any research on this subject, but I will say, you know, apart from gender, I mean, sure, it does matter who's in the room. Right. Like, we want to pretend it doesn't. We want to pretend that every provider is looking out for us the same amount. But there are providers in all situations, not just cesarean, who are more attuned to patient needs, who are. Have more expertise in what they do. I think that's. It's something important to point to.

[Alison Stewart]

And you know, at may have been her way of saying, like, these are my guys, but these were her people. This was her team that she wanted to work with. And it made me wonder, are there A teams, B teams, C teams, D teams?

[Susan Burton]

Well, I think the word team is super important because in obstetrics, right, there are so many people like you described. There were so many people in this room. And working as a team is something that doctors I talk to, I know they think a lot about, and some of them were drawn to OB precisely because. Because of that team aspect.

[Alison Stewart]

Cultures are hard to change. People don't feel comfortable speaking up in front of patients, especially in the emergency room. Do people in the field in these teams, just generally speaking, do they feel confident to say, hey, we should stop?

[Susan Burton]

I think that is something that is. There's increasing awareness of those dynamics and of that being something that needs to be made possible for everybody in the room. Even, for instance, you know, let's say there's a young obstetrician who's doing the surgeon and the young doing the surgery, and the young obstetrician suspects this patient might be in pain, but there's an older, more senior anesthesiologist in the room who maybe is saying, well, I think it's. I think it's just pressure. I think it's normal. What do you do in that interaction? Right? What do you do? Like, the anesthesiologist is treating the pain. The surgeon. Should the surgeon be staying in her lane? How do you navigate that? That's something that healthcare provider need training in.

[Lucy Santi]

What is something that you learned about getting an epidural that maybe you didn't know before?

[Susan Burton]

Oh, that's such a good question. I mean, I didn't. You know, I had an epidural for the births of one of my children, and, you know, I didn't know anything other than somebody was behind my back putting something in. So it was actually fascinating to me to learn sort of the technical part of how an epidural is inserted into the. Into a patient's back.

[Lucy Santi]

And what is it supposed to do?

[Susan Burton]

So the epidural, it bathes the anesthetic drugs that are pushed through the epidural bathe the nerves near your spinal cord. And the idea when an epidural is used for cesarean is to numb sensation in a patient's midsection, but to allow the patient to remain awake for a birth. And I should say that an epidural is typically used when the C section is not planned. So you go to the hospital you are planning on a vaginal labor. All of a sudden, something changes. You need to go to C section. If you have an existing epidural for your vaginal labor, they will convert that epidural so that it can be used for surgical anesthesia. If you have a planned C section, you're more likely to have what's called spinal anesthesia, which is also the kind of anesthesia where you get a needle in your back.

[Lucy Santi]

And it is generally considered safer than general anesthesia.

[Susan Burton]

Yes. So for years, neuraxial anesthesia, which is spinals and epidurals, have been considered the gold standard for cesarean. They, you know, pain control after birth. Again, they allow the patient to remain awake. And that's in general. Anesthesia carries some risks for pregnant patients, although increasingly people are looking at that data and saying, is it safer than we thought it was? It's definitely safer than it used to be for a number of reasons, including that there are video scopes that allow you to see down a patient's airway.

[Lucy Santi]

And Clara, she can feel in her C section. She can feel it. The epidural doesn't work. What goes on with Clara?

[Susan Burton]

So Clara, she's been laboring for, you know, about 24 hours. She comes to the hospital, she gets induced. So she's been laboring for, gosh, maybe 24, 36 hours. She goes into C section. When you go into a C section, they will do what's called a skin test to see if the anesthesia is working. Clara's skin test was fine. She couldn't feel anything when they touched her skin. But when they opened her up, at some point after that, Clara did begin to feel sensation. So is there a way to say exactly what went wrong with Clara's epidural? Probably not, right? There is a way to say what went wrong in the room, which was that the pain wasn't handled. But, you know, it's funny, one of the doctors I talked to asking her this question, well, why would an epidural not work? And she said, you know, there's a lot we don't know about epidurals. And sometimes the answer is that.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's take a couple calls. This is Elizabeth, who is calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for making the time to call, all of it.

[Elizabeth]

Thank you for having me on. 40 something years ago, I had was pregnant with twins. I was two weeks late. I didn't realize I was going into labor. Called my doctor, she said, well, I'm here at the hospital. Come in and Said, I need to take an X ray. I decided I could not expose these two babies to radiation. She then said, well, you'll have to have a cesarean. I didn't have a choice. They gave me an epidural, and they strapped me down, tilted me backwards, put a tent over my head, would not allow my husband to come in with me. And I started to feel something not pleasant. And then I also started to become sick. Nobody had asked me when I had last eaten, so I thought this was it. And somebody eventually noticed. I had a mask over my face and wiped away the vomit. I had two daughters in healthy condition, but it was so traumatic. I would not. I did not go back to my obstetrician, even for my checkup. I was so upset, so angry at how I had been treated, how I was forced into the decision. The first baby was head down. Second baby was breech. She didn't feel confident. I had no desire to have an X ray. I did not want to put my kids in danger.

[Alison Stewart]

Elizabeth, thank you so much for sharing. Really appreciate your candor. Let's talk to Deborah from Park Ridge, New Jersey. Hi, Deborah. Thank you so much for making the time to talk to Olivet.

[Deborah]

Good morning. Good afternoon, I should say. I have two children. The first one was born by cesarean, and there was a very, very kind, very, very elderly gentleman who was the anesthesiologist who made very sure that I did not feel anything. And I gave birth to a very healthy son. I planned to have a vaginal birth and did work and research to get ready for that. And I was in labor with my daughter for 24 hours, was dilated, was evacuating the child as women do. When she climbed back into my uterus, no one had ever seen anything like this. She's an adult now, and you can see that personality trait in her. Anyway, I was brought to the or. No one ever saw that before. And I was given the epidural, and they began. They put up the screen and began to operate. This time, the anesthesiologist was a young woman. And I felt a lot of discomfort, and that's a euphemism. I said to the woman, you know, I can feel this. And she just would not look at me. She was adamantine. She would not help me. And it was really, really a very difficult experience, a very different experience from the first experience I had.

[Alison Stewart]

Deborah, thank you so much.

[Lucy Santi]

We really appreciate you calling in. I wanted to get your responses to our two calls. Yeah.

[Susan Burton]

So, I mean, I think, you know, in regards to the first caller and the, you know, the vomiting and the nausea. You know, it's really important for doctors to set expectations for patients about what they might experience during cesarean. Nausea and vomiting are things that might happen. And then as far as the second caller and the presence of the anesthesiologist in the room and whether that person's presence is comforting or not. Right. That can make such a huge difference if the person attending to you is attentive and to caring or if they're more removed.

[Lucy Santi]

We are speaking with journalists and podcaster Susan Burton, the host of the Retrievals, the C Sections. We'll have more after a quick break. This is all of it.

[Alison Stewart]

You're listening to all of IT on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is journalist and podcaster Susan Burton, the host of the Retrievals, the C Section. This deeply reported series investigates why so many women experience severe pain during C sections and why their pain is often dismissed. Let's talk about Dr. Heather Nixon. She was the head of obstetric. I can't say this anesthesia at the hospital. She's a pretty powerful arc in this story. She goes from being in shock to being in anger to trying to change her whole department. First of all, who is she in the world of anesthesiology?

[Deborah]

I'll.

[Susan Burton]

Yes. So Dr. Heather Nixon is the head of obstetric anesthesia at this hospital, UI Health, at the University of Illinois Chicago. And she is also very active in the professional society that, you know, sort of oversees obstetric anesthesiologists, which is called soap. And when Clara has her excruciatingly painful C section, it really wakes Heather up to the fact that, my goodness, this is happening to patients all over the country. And I need my colleagues to see what I have. That pain during cesarean has been normalized and we need to do something about it. Right. And a lot of times, so these are obstetric anesthesiologists. They are passionate about obstetric patients. Maybe they aren't seeing patients in excruciating pain. Right. They might not know that this is such a widespread problem. That's one thing. But then the other thing she's sort of thinking about is, well, even those of us who think we know what's going on for our patients, do we really, you know, do we really know what's going on? Are our patients always telling us when they're in pain? So she sets out to change this within her own institution. And in a bigger picture way, this.

[Lucy Santi]

Is an Interesting text.

[Alison Stewart]

It says, with this pain, is this racial?

[Lucy Santi]

This parallels maternal mortality issues where complaints of doctors not hearing patients telling them something is wrong as an explanation of higher problems of maternal deaths with black women.

[Susan Burton]

Yes. So there is so little research on pain during cesarean in general. There's only one study I know of that discusses race and pain during cesarean. This was at a hospital in Texas of 110 patients. And this study found that black patients were five times more likely than white patients to report pain during cesarean.

[Lucy Santi]

This text says, I think it's important to make a distinction between medication that we can use before baby is delivered that we can use. The other thing to consider is that once the surgery is underway, it's very difficult to stop. The patient says, I'm having pain because she might be hemorrhaging, or we might be at a critical moment in the surgery, but we actually can't stop.

[Susan Burton]

So there are points in the surgery when it's definitely more challenging to stop than others. There are points when the surgery can be stopped, and those situations can be awkward. Right. If you're dosing the epidural with extra. It can take several minutes for those drugs to kick in. Everybody can be standing around with their arms crossed waiting for it to work. But if that saves a patient from excruciating pain, then that's the right choice.

[Lucy Santi]

Can we talk about some of the things that Dr. Nixon has implemented? It's a very concrete system of pain scoring and documenting. Tell us a little bit why record keeping is such a powerful tool for change.

[Susan Burton]

It's a great question. So, you know, first of all, the first thing I'll say is I talked to a number of patients who had excruciating pain and found that it wasn't reflected in their records, which was, you know, just. It was so infuriating, so painful. Okay, so second, what Heather is doing at her hospital is anesthesiologists are prompted at regular intervals to get a pain score from the patient and then to ask more questions about what kind of pain and where, and then to use that information to decide on an intervention. This sounds very basic, but it's actually pretty unusual. An additional advantage of it is it. It not only prompts anesthesiologists to ask about pain, it gives the patient an opportunity to do so, because there are a lot of reasons patients may not speak up about pain. Think about it, right? You're in the middle of the surgery, you're scared. Is something going to happen to your baby? Is it okay to Stop. You don't know if it's okay to stop. So giving the patient an opportunity to speak up about pain, I think is so important.

[Alison Stewart]

This is reminding me of. I think it was Atul Gawende.

[Susan Burton]

Uh huh.

[Alison Stewart]

Made the checklist for surgeons.

[Deborah]

Yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

Do you remember? This is what it reminds me of a lot.

[Susan Burton]

Yes. This is exactly that kind of thing. Like it's building it into the workflow. Yeah.

[Alison Stewart]

I want you to tell us a little bit about Susannah Stanford. She's in episode three. Tell us who she is.

[Susan Burton]

So Susanna is an extraordinary person. She had a painful cesarean in 2010 in England, which is where she lives. And in the year or so that followed, she had the experience a lot of patients do, which is like, oh my God, I didn't know this was a thing that could happen. Am I the only one it's ever happened to? One thing led to another. She discovered she was not the only person it had ever happened to. And she basically set out to try to address this problem. She went from patient to expert and she has implemented, she is, is partially responsible for implementing this like systemic guidance in the UK that helps doctors address pain during cesarean.

[Alison Stewart]

This is from the podcast. This is episode three. I'm gonna read an editorial by a British doctor. And this was about the need to keep good records in case you got sued. It said it was all so simple in the old days. You simply injected the local anesthetic down the epidural, warned her that she'd feel a bit of pain, and told the obstetrician to get on with it. And then things began to become more complicated. First women be to complain more. No doubt fueled by general changes in patients attitudes as they made the transition from passive recipients to healthcare to consumers. That's from 2006.

[Susan Burton]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Alison Stewart]

How did this help you?

[Susan Burton]

Gosh.

[Alison Stewart]

Did finding this out help you shape the way you thought about the podcast and about the problem?

[Susan Burton]

I mean, when. So Susanna is the one who gave me that editorial. And you know, when she read it to me, you know, I just had the reaction like, well, you know, the problem is the, you know, the women started speaking up. Right. But I think it speaks to something bigger symbolically, which is that it matters that patients are speaking up. It matters that healthcare providers too are speaking up about this. Healthcare providers don't want this to go on. Healthcare providers don't want patients to be in pain. So. So it's crazy that that was written 2006, but it's wonderful that people are doing something about it now.

[Lucy Santi]

We Got an interesting text here that says, how can fathers be effective allies in this?

[Susan Burton]

That's such a great question. I think being educated, understanding that pandering cesarean is a risk and knowing that there are solutions for it and, and knowing that you can advocate for your partner in the operating room.

[Lucy Santi]

What was it like for you to hear these stories? Because many of these stories are really quite raw. You as a journalist and as a woman.

[Susan Burton]

Yeah, these stories powerfully affect me. It's a lot to take in. I feel enormous responsibility to the people who share these stories with me. And, you know, it's the kind of thing where somebody would write me an email and I would read the email and, you know, just have to sit there for a while before being able to respond. Yeah, I'm powerfully affected by this stuff.

[Lucy Santi]

Have you gotten any pushback yet?

[Susan Burton]

Gosh, that's a good question. I haven't gotten any pushback yet, but the podcast has only been over a few days. I'm sure there will be pushback. I'm sure there are things, you know, I could have done better. You know, one of the things I really appreciate about medicine is that when something goes wrong in medicine, you know, there's a real culture of looking at went wrong and thinking, how can we do it better? And that's something that I, you know, like to bring to my own work too.

[Lucy Santi]

Is there anything I haven't asked you that you think is really important that we should talk about this?

[Susan Burton]

You've asked such great questions. I mean, I think something I would want to leave listeners with is that pain during cesarean is a problem, but there are things people can do about it. Most C sections, the pain is tolerable and limited to certain parts of the surgery.

[Lucy Santi]

The podcast is the retrieval Season two. The C Sections. I have been speaking with journalists and podcast center. Susan Burton, thank you so much for joining us.

[Susan Burton]

You're welcome. Thank you for having me. For 140 years, MultiCare has been in Washington prioritizing long term solutions, partnering with local communities and expanding access to care. Together, we're building a healthier future.

[Larry Fink]

Learn [e-mail] Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. Since then, New York Public Radio's rigorous journalism has gone on to win a Peabody Award and a Dupont Columbia Award, among others. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship wnyc. Org.