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Lael M. Luedtke, M.D., Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon:
I am Lael Luedtke. I am a pediatric orthopedic surgeon practicing at Shriners Children's New England. I grew up on a farm, and my dad could fix anything and everything, and usually with a broomstick, and some wire, and some baling twine. He could just fix anything. Just have always enjoyed fixing things. It actually was fairly late in the game that I decided to go into ortho. I did the rotation, and it was everything I liked about general surgery, but even better because it's very project-oriented. There's generally a well-defined problem, and so then you seek out a well-defined solution. If the bone is broken, you fix it. I liked the clarity of it and the mechanical nature of it.
Such a privilege to be able to take care of children. It takes a huge amount of trust on the part of the parent because you're handing over your child's wellbeing to this other person. You have to, first of all, honor that trust, and I think when we look at what we can offer in terms of therapy services, the prosthetics and orthotics services, that we really try so hard to make it work well for the family and try to minimize the amount of time they're spent seeking healthcare, and making it convenient for them, and trying to keep the bigger family needs in mind as well.
Kids are great because they don't really have any other agenda about what's going on. They just want to get back to doing the things they like to do. They're actually much easier to treat than adults because they're going to work super hard to get back to those things. Kids just have more zest, and I love that energy. I am really privileged to work with just incredibly great people, and everyone is very mission-driven. Our goal is to give kids the best possible care without having to be burdened with concern about how they're going to pay for it. We most often get more when we give, and I think that that is just one of the cultures of my family that carries through to what I do.
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