In My Words: Meet the Leads – Dr. Andrea Andrade | Paediatric Neurologist and Epileptologist

It has helped enormously to not only create strong ties with my colleagues, epileptologists out there in Ontario, but also with colleagues that are non neurologists, health care professionals, nursing, EEG technologists, community educators and to spread the word way better.

Also among my own community here in southwestern Ontario, it has allowed us to really have stronger ties with some of our providers that have become champions in Project ECHO and epilepsy care.

So I think it is one of those incredibly positive things that has helped us to integrate our care and spread the word of what we do and share our knowledge with our community providers.

So part of what I mentioned before,  spreading the word about epilepsy, teaching my colleagues about how important it is to identify those patients early on, and to tell them of all the options that we have right now.

So basically bring epilepsy out of the darkness and put it out there for everybody [healthcare professionals] to understand it, to integrate it in their lives and to know what to do.

And because we are fortunate enough to live in a country that has those programs and has these initiatives but we are a minority in the world.

At Southwestern Ontario and our LHIN, our catchment area is incredibly large, geographically speaking. So we take care of children and families living with epilepsy across the board, in the north west region and also all the way to the southwest region.

So it’s incredibly large, geographically speaking.

So it’s really key for us to have those connections with folks, for instance, up north like Dr. George Derbyshire, who has been a champion in ECHO sessions and epilepsy care and who is our community neurologist in Thunder Bay and not only facilitates care and people stay at home to receive their epilepsy care, but we communicate we faster and way easier for those patients that need fast-tracked epilepsy surgical candidacy or gene diagnosis or ketogenic diet and so on and so forth.

So he has been a champion and again, accessing or providing care also for communities that are and in certain disadvantages or our folks from

Indigenous communities as well.

So that’s quite important to bring everybody into the same page.

That’s a fantastic question.

And I have to say, one of my greatest mentors is Dr. Carter Sneed.
And he has been an inspiration to me just sitting and having a small conversation with him; how he’s a forward thinker and how he thinks outside the box and brings ideas that can be implemented in different settings to me was an eye opener, that we can use if frameworks and different ways to approach epilepsy care in a way larger environment, as opposed to just limited to our typical traditional clinic model that I’m not saying it’s bad, but is it’s the way more when we’re encountering chronic conditions.

So he’s one of my main inspirations and teacher in regards of epilepsy.

What lessons has your work life taught you?

You grow and mature with your job as you become older and a more seasoned Epileptologist.

One of the main lessons I have learned about these this job and especially working here in this community, is the responsibility that leaders in any area or field have in terms to promote good messages out there to the community, to be role models.

And that’s something that I have been privileged to be here in London; to have that close relationship with my community, with my patients, with the families I care for, with my community agency, and the educators over there. With families who have moved from being the patient, coming to the clinic to being fundraising out there for epilepsy care.

So all of those things are really, really important and inspiring for us and make us humbled and privileged to be part of something way bigger than us or was bigger than one individual.

Epilepsy care is again, as I mentioned to you, it’s not for one person job.

And the approach that other professionals bring to the team is as important as the physician’s point of view.

So I have never had any problem to have my nurse practitioners and nursing staff, social workers to come and give me their perspective and listen to them because their views have been transformative.