In this UConn Health Minute, child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Meha Saxena discusses the growing use of AI chatbots among teens seeking mental health support. While these tools offer quick, around-the-clock responses, they often lack the nuance needed to address complex psychiatric issues.

MB01WLF77REBNOC

0

MB01YBINNWUYXTK

0

0

The UConn School of Medicine Class of 2026 placed 103 students into prestigious residency programs throughout the country recording a 98% match rate. Forty percent are staying in Connecticut and 36% have chosen a primary care-related residency.

MB01JKEUXI8REL7

0

In this UConn Health Minute, a patient with a potentially fatal inherited blood clot disorder finally finds answers and support at UConn Health. Christy shares how expert care, close monitoring and a trusted physician helped her regain peace of mind and confidence in the future for both her and her son.

MB01BDXCJQBKYOX

0

More than eight in 10 of us have had or will have back pain, but far fewer will have surgery for it. Those who do have surgery enter a realm of innovation like few other areas of medicine. That’s what drew Dr. Isaac Moss into the specialty, yet he says there’s still so much we don’t know. Dr. Moss, renowned spine surgeon and the chair of UConn Health’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, discusses the advances in spine surgery, its promising future, and the importance of academic medicine, and offers his first-hand perspective on the health care systems in the U.S. and Canada.

Submit questions for Healthy Rounds:

HealthyRounds@uchc.edu (mailto:HealthyRounds@uchc.edu)

Dr. Isaac Moss:

https://www.uconnhealth.org/providers/profiles/moss-isaac

UConn Health Comprehensive Spine Center:

https://www.uconnhealth.org/spine

The Brain and Spine Institute at UConn Health:

https://www.uconnhealth.org/brain-spine

UConn Health Orthopedics and Sports Medicine

https://www.uconnhealth.org/orthopedics-sports-medicine

UConn Health:

https://www.uconnhealth.org (https://www.uconnhealth.org/)

Grant support from Coverys:

www.coverys.com (http://www.coverys.com/)

Transcript

Dr. Alessi: Welcome to the Healthy Rounds Podcast, where we provide you with up to date and timely information that’s brought to you by national and international leaders in their fields. This podcast is brought to you by UConn Health, with support from the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, in addition to a grant from Coverys.

This podcast is not designed to direct your own personal medical care, and that should only be done by your physician. I’m your host, Dr. Anthony Alessi, and it’s great to have as my guest today, Dr. Isaac Moss. Dr. Moss is professor and chairman of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery here at the University of Connecticut.

He is also a fellowship trained spine surgeon. Welcome to the show, Isaac.

Dr. Moss: Thank you, Tony. Great to be here.

Dr. Alessi: First of all, let me thank you for your support of this podcast, which we’re looking forward to really furthering medical information coming from our institution. To begin, I want to go back a little bit, back to 2019.

Here you are at the University of Connecticut. You’re a very successful, well-known spine surgeon. You have grant support and suddenly you are thrust into the limelight of being chairman of one of the largest departments at the University of Connecticut, certainly one of the busiest. Walk me through that.

I mean, did you want to become a chairman because you were fairly young at the time? And when I think of chairs, I mean, they’re usually older folks.

Dr. Moss: So, I appreciate first of all that shout out and calling me young. I’ll let my kids know. But yeah, I think I was a little, I was typically a little bit younger than the average person who takes this kind of job on, but, you know, sometimes kind of opportunities come your way and they’re hard to say no to. And this particular opportunity, you know, we’re lucky. We have a tremendous, tremendous orthopedic department, all specialties, great people, great education, great research. And at the time there was a transition at the health center and the leadership came to me and said, “Hey, you know, we need some leadership in the department at this time, we think you’re well suited to do it.” And that was flattering, first of all, and somewhat hard to say no to, especially if you ask my mom.

But, you know, so I took a step back and said, okay, is this something, well, you go from a sort of your own practice to leadership, you have to change your focus from what’s good for you and what’s good for your patients is obviously your main focus, to what can you do for everybody else? And, you have to be at a certain point in life where you can do that, first of all, and a certain attitude to do it. And, so actually the first thing I did was I sat down with a group of orthopedic surgeons. I said, “Hey guys, is this something you want me to do?”

Right? Because one of the great things we have in a department is we have a tremendous team, right? So even though we’re individual surgeons, we all have our subspecialties, we really work as a team together. And I think that’s one of the strengths of our department because we get that whether it comes to patient care, right, so in fact, yourself, Dr. Alessi, you’re part of our department. And so how often do I send you a patient saying, I’m not sure what to do with this person. They have some particular neurologic problem. Can you help me define it so that I can give them the right care?

That also happens sometimes somebody comes in, we think is a neck problem, maybe it’s a shoulder problem. I have great colleagues that can do that too, so that is a tremendous asset to our department. And so, which is one of the reasons I said, “Hey team, if we can do this together and we can make ourselves better, I’ll take this on as a respon...

0

UConn Health orthopedic surgeon Robert Arciero is a team physician for many of UConn's sports teams. He says one of the most gratifying aspects of his job is having a major role in getting athletes back playing on the court or the field following a serious injury.

MB01UGXSWQTFM5L

0

UConn Health's Kathy Coyner is an orthopedic surgeon and team physician for UConn athletics. A former Division One basketball player herself, she knows the importance of keeping athletes healthy during post season play.

MB01FVZSUNTAMPD

0

UConn sports medicine physician Matt Hall says it takes a team approach to keep the athletes performing at their best during the post season.

MB01ZSQ1H3CDUO3

0