2024-05-14 03:44:00
Intensive work, the desire to help a seriously ill child attracted and interested, fascinated and gave satisfaction. Having started his career as a doctor in Šiauliai at a good time, when there were enough doctors of this profession in the hospital, and in the right place, he is still grateful to the successful fate that gave him the opportunity to do his favorite work in a professional medical team and to be appreciated. The doctor, who was awarded the name of the meritorious Lithuanian doctor and the honorary sign of the meritorious Lithuanian doctor, accepts this as a pleasant but binding surprise.
On time and in the right place
The name of the meritorious doctor is perhaps the most honorable assessment of the performance of doctors in the country. It was very unexpected for doctor D. Ovsiuk.
“When the administration called and informed me that I had to present myself, I thought about possible problems. They said that I would have to go to Vilnius to participate in the event. It was a surprise, pleasant, but binding,” says the doctor and does not hide his joy that he had the opportunity to participate in a very beautiful celebration held in the hall of the Palace of Lords. Everyone is in a high mood, with happy faces, the program is impressive, beautiful words are said.
Born and raised in Šiauliai, Dobilas Ovsiukas only left Šiauliai for a short time – when he was studying at the Faculty of Medicine of Vilnius University. He chose his profession while studying at the former F. Žemaitis secondary school.
When he was in the tenth grade, he decided that he would choose the path of a doctor. The most motivating thing was the desire to help others, to take care of the sick. An example was Genovaitė Ovsiukienė, a mother who worked as a dentist, who also encouraged her son, who was studying with excellent grades, to choose medicine.
Pranas and Genovaitė Ovsiukas raised three children: Clover, Ramunė and Eglė, so in a large family it was necessary to know how to share and help each other.
After passing the high school graduation and entrance exams in the same year, Dobilas became a pediatrics student at Vilnius University Faculty of Medicine. The future doctor completed a one-year internship in Šiauliai and, after obtaining a doctor’s diploma, started working in the Children’s Department of the Republic Šiauliai Hospital.
The hands of a doctor were needed in the Children’s Intensive Care Unit, which at that time operated in the Surgical Corps. In 1984, the Children’s Intensive Care Unit was created, although there were no specially trained reanimatologists. Valerijus Lapšinas, a doctor who worked in the department, suggested a young colleague to come to this department. Clover agreed and in 1990 he started working in the Children’s Intensive Care Unit with children in a particularly serious condition.
The young pediatric doctor was interested in more intensive medical work, attracted by the desire to help a seriously ill child. It interested, fascinated and gave job satisfaction. It happened that there was a shortage of doctors in this specialty at the Šiauliai hospital at that time.
“Everything coincided smoothly: the desire, the need, and the possibilities,” says the doctor, who started his career as a doctor in Šiauliai at the right time and in the right place.
I had to learn not only from the former head of the department, Eduard Laurinavičius, who was replaced at the head of the department by Tatjana Kravcova, who later went to live and work in Germany. Up until now, Valerijus Lapšinas, the Meritorious Lithuanian doctor, pediatric anesthesiologist, reanimatologist, has been an example and teacher.
D. Ovsiukas studied the specialty of pediatric anesthesiologist at Vilnius doctors’ training courses. Back then, there was a specialty of pediatric anesthesiologist-reanimatologist, only ten years ago the specialty became general for both children and adults.
“I cared more about children, so I went deeper into their treatment,” says the doctor, who later acquired the skills of anesthesiology, without which work in intensive care units is already unimaginable.
Helping a choking baby is not rare
The planned meeting with the doctor had to be postponed, because at that time a two-year-old child was brought to the Children’s Intensive Care Unit with suffocation. First aid was given to the child, the condition was already stabilized, but it was necessary to perform a procedure that requires the competence of a doctor anesthesiologist.
During the second meeting, I first ask about the health of this child and what kind of help he has received. According to the doctor, it was necessary to make sure there was a foreign body in the airway.
The toddler choked while eating Rafaelo, a candy covered in coconut flakes. The child suddenly coughed and began to choke. A fibrobrinchoscopy was performed, which is applied under general anesthesia, when a certain device is introduced into the airways of a sleeping child. During the procedure, pieces of walnut were found and washed out. “Nuts should not be given to small children, especially when the teeth are not sufficiently formed and chewing is not yet complete,” advises the doctor to parents, especially since this case is not unique.
Over 10 suffocating children come to the department a year. According to the doctor, these are not common cases, but very dangerous.
“Our work is a team, everyone does their job, we would not be able to help such a child if there was no endoscopist, anesthesiologist or appropriate equipment. It needs staff, technology and it’s nice to have it. There are cases when the condition is not so stable and the patient cannot be transferred to another hospital, help should be provided here and now. It’s good when that help is available”, says doctor D. Ovsiukas.
Unforgettable cases
In three decades of working in the Children’s Intensive Care Unit, no one would count the number of children whose lives were saved. The most painful thing for a doctor is when children who have suffered severe injuries in car accidents, who have fallen from a great height, and injured scooter riders are brought to the department. It is very painful to see a small child scalded with tea or coffee. “These are also problems of child neglect, but children are very active, and mothers are tired,” says the doctor.
“The biggest failure for any doctor is the death of a child when they can no longer help. Most often, this happens for objective reasons, when the doctor can still do a lot, but the child’s vital functions are depleted”, says D. Ovsiukas about children who have suffered complex injuries.
Another group whose loss has to be survived are disabled children. Their lives are made easier by anesthesiologists, but their vital functions run out and they leave this world at a relatively early age.
A child who spent a lot of time in the intensive care unit is unforgettable to the doctor. He had impaired intestinal nutrition through the bloodstream. A large part of the intestine was removed, a small fragment of the intestine remained, so special feeding methods were used. “It was necessary to feed him not only orally, but also intravenously, so until this system was perfected, until the parents were trained to provide this help, the boy spent almost a year in the Children’s Intensive Care Unit”, the doctor recalled the self-sacrificing medical fight for the child’s life that ended in failure .
The COVID-19 pandemic, which brought more than one child in serious condition to the department, is also unforgettable. Many needed different methods of applying oxygen therapy, so the hospital also purchased modern devices, a high-flow oxygen therapy machine, so it was able to provide assistance to children in a more difficult condition and there was no need to transport them anywhere. There were patients with damage to the respiratory system or even the intestines. The latter also required surgery.
An unforgettable sixteen-year-old teenager in a very serious condition, who had co-morbidities and was overweight. “The boy developed many complications, blood coagulation was disturbed, blood clots began to form and it was not possible to save him”, – the doctor remembers this and other unsuccessful cases, because they are repeatedly discussed, conclusions drawn, decisions made.
Most of the children who require complex and prolonged intensive care medical assistance, after stabilization of their condition, are taken for further treatment to clinics in big cities – tertiary level medical institutions, where the highest level of specialist assistance, recommendations and treatment are provided. “Our competence is to stabilize the condition of children in serious condition, and, if necessary, to organize transport to a tertiary care institution. During the year, 10-15 children are taken to tertiary level intensive care and resuscitation departments – not much,” says doctor D. Ovsiukas, who is most happy with those whose condition improves and who are transferred to the Department of Children’s Diseases or Children’s Surgery, Orthopedics at the Women’s and Children’s Clinics – trauma center. After successful treatment in the Children’s Intensive Care Unit, children also go to rehabilitation centers.
The work is collective and team work
One doctor, anesthesiologist, resuscitator, working in the Children’s Intensive Care Unit, would not do anything. “In the department where I work, there is a professional team of doctors, nurses and their assistants that you can always trust and get help from,” says the experienced doctor.
When treating a patient in this department, the efforts of the employees of other departments are also needed: laboratory services, instrumental tests are performed: X-ray, computer tomography, magnetic resonance.
Having two qualification categories, doctor D. Ovsiukas performs the work of a resuscitator and an anesthesiologist in the department. The department’s anesthesiologists have to put the child to sleep even for venous catheterization, when the child does not let go, resists, is afraid of the needle. It is necessary to put the child to sleep during gastroscopy and bronchoscopy, as invasive procedures are painful. Anesthesia and re-arrhythmia with electroshock are required. Some trauma patients who arrive with respiratory problems and require artificial lung ventilation also need to be sedated.
In the past, it was necessary to provide assistance to the children of Šiauliai Region, when it was necessary to go to other hospitals in Šiauliai Region to bring children in serious condition. Now there are no more children’s departments in regional hospitals, and the ambulance transports all children who need inpatient medical care to Šiauliai.
The doctor notices that the number of children themselves has also decreased, so there are fewer illnesses and accidents involving children. “But the total number of children treated in the department has not changed, because not only the people of Šiauliai come for help, but also from the whole county. Children of Ukrainian war refugees, who also get sick and suffer injuries, have also increased the number of patients.
The doctor goes to the children’s operating room, located in the Women’s and Children’s Clinic, not only to help children, but also to deepen his knowledge. In the operating room, you have to work both with surgeons who perform abdominal or planned operations, and with traumatologists who operate on traumatized patients. I also have to work in the Dentist’s office, where sedation is applied to disabled children.
How Oats became Ovsiuk
Doctor Dobilas Ovsiukas knows the history of his family for five generations. It is told from generation to generation because of the act of the great-great-grandfather, who not only became a love emigrant, but also changed the surname of the family. “My last name should have been Oats, but my ancestors fled to a neighboring country back in the days of tsarist Russia. She ran away from her parents, who did not allow her to marry, and after getting married she changed her surname to Ovsianikas.
Later he returned to Lithuania and stayed with this last name,” says the doctor about his relatives, who include both Latvians and Poles.
Wife Lyudmila is half-Ukrainian, as her father is Ukrainian and her mother is Lithuanian. They met while working in the Children’s Intensive Care Unit, where Liudmila worked as a children’s intensive care nurse. The couple raised three children: two sons, Andrii and Pauli, and a daughter, Elena.
Parents have a lot to be proud of. Andrius, the eldest, graduated in architecture in England and works in London in a company that implements large architectural projects. Paulius is an information technology specialist, has started a family, and is raising a daughter, Aureja. The family lives in Vilnius, his wife Emilija is a receptionist at a private medical center. Daughter Elena is studying in the tenth grade of J. Janonis Gymnasium. The girl is not only an excellent student, but also a dancer, singer, artist – likes to draw, just like her older son.
“Both families have people with an inclination towards art, so this talent is hereditary,” smiles the doctor, who himself does not pay much attention to the arts. He is good at working with computer technology, likes photography, likes to ride a bike for fun. While on vacation in Nida with his family, he likes to sit on bicycles and enjoy the wonderful scenery of the island.
For a father of many children, it is disappointing that the whole family rarely gets together. The eldest son Andrius is an especially rare guest, returning home only a few times a year. Parents visited their son in England more than once. Computer technology helps to communicate, so they often meet on social networks.
For the well-deserved Lithuanian doctor Dobilas Ovsiukas, doing his favorite job, it is disappointing when he does not succeed in doing what he wants. “The doctor himself always wants to help in this work, but sometimes the circumstances are such that it is not possible to do the work as you would like,” admits the award-winning doctor who never gives up. Because every failure makes you want to be better prepared next time in such a situation.
2024-05-14 03:44:00