Megan Paulsen, MD, neonatal physician at Children’s Minnesota, chose her job in hopes of making a difference. Now, she’s making strides in neonatal research and prioritizing the patient experience at every step.
Passion for neonatology
When Dr. Paulsen was deciding what career to pursue, she initially enrolled in an interdisciplinary program that involved education, leadership, and psychology. After starting that program, however, she realized she missed math and science, leading her to medical school.
“From the moment I stepped into medical school, everything clicked. The rigorous training, the camaraderie, the knowledge that I was directly impacting others’ lives – it all resonated deeply,” she said.
Dr. Paulsen was drawn to neonatology as the in-between of maternal-fetal medicine and pediatrics.
“The NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] isn’t just a unit; it’s a threshold. It’s where hope and uncertainty hold hands, where parents meet their children in a space between fear and love, between science and faith. I chose neonatology because I wanted to stand in that space with them,” Dr. Paulsen explained.
Dr. Paulsen balances realism with optimism in her job, understanding that medicine is both an art and a science.
“There’s nothing quite like a moment a baby takes their first breath, and nothing like the weight of knowing that sometimes, they need help to take it,” she explained. “Neonatology is about walking with families through the hardest days of their lives and celebrating with them when their babies finally go home. This is why I’m here, because in the NICU, every story begins in crisis, but many end in hope.”
Improving the patient experience
Dr. Paulsen says that health care professionals all bring part of themselves into medicine. For her, that’s experiencing first-hand the gaps, successes, and struggles that parents feel when in the NICU.
“In 2019, the NICU stopped being the place where I worked and became the place where I lived,” Dr. Paulsen said. “I gave birth to twin boys at 25 weeks gestation. I became the mother standing at the bedside, the parent watching the monitors like a lifeline, the person who existed in the strange, timeless world of the NICU for over 100 days.”
Dr. Paulsen was humbled by what she experienced.
“I was powerless in way I had never known before, and honestly, I hated it. I saw firsthand the gaps between what we, as providers, believe we communicate and what parents actually hear,” she said. “Despite these gaps, I’m beyond thankful for my care team who helped support me through my time in the NICU and continuously reminded me how important our jobs are. I’m better because of that experience.”
Her experience in the NICU changed her, not only as a physician, but also as a person. It impacted how she viewed good care, how she talked to parents, and more. Although her son was cared for at a different hospital’s NICU, she brought these learnings to her job at Children’s Minnesota, understanding that there’s always room for improvement.
“I was reminded that evidence, no matter how strong, is always filtered through the lens of human experience,” she said. “Most of all, it gave me a mission. To use what I learned in my own journey to make the path a little easier for the next family to walk it.”
Redefining outcomes
Dr. Paulsen is applying her learnings from her own NICU experience to help shape the future of neonatology at Children’s Minnesota and to share these lessons to impact care of premature infants worldwide. She recently received an internal research grant from the Children’s Minnesota Research Institute to redefine outcomes for premature infants. Her hypothesis being that a Children’s Minnesota-specific database will show gaps in health care access and improve health care overall.
“I am interested in how we, as neonatal providers, measure outcomes for babies born extremely preterm, not just in broad national datasets, but in the lives of the children and families we care for right here at Children’s Minnesota,” Dr. Paulsen explained.
Dr. Paulsen’s research is aimed at following babies born prematurely to help understand and identify early predictors of health and developmental needs later in life. Her goal is to set a new standard for comprehensive outcome tracking in neonatal care.
“We often look at survival statistics and short-term complications, but these measures alone do not tell the full story. I believe that to truly understand outcomes, we must listen not only to the data, but also to the parents who walk this journey long after discharge, to the providers who care for these children in the NICU and beyond,” she explained.
Dr. Paulsen’s research is still in progress, but she hopes it will help steer the future of neonatology, allowing parents to receive comprehensive long-term care that takes into account families and their experiences.
“By integrating perspectives from during and after hospitalization and from families over the years that follow, we can redefine how we measure success for our most vulnerable patients,” Dr. Paulsen said. “And once we redefine it, we can work to improve it, ensuring that the care we provide is not just about survival, but about supporting the best possible futures for these children and their families.”
