Dr. Tara Baetz

Thank you so much for asking me to contribute to the virtual Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) event! My name is Tara Baetz and I am the Head of the Division of Medical Oncology in the Department of Oncology at the Cancer Centre of Southeastern Ontario in Kingston. I came to Kingston in July of 2000 to do a fellowship in investigational new drug development at the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) which is located at Queen’s University. Following my fellowship I was recruited on as faculty as a medical oncologist and have been living and working in Kingston ever since.

I did my undergraduate training (BSc Biology) at the University of Ottawa and stayed in Ottawa to go to medical school and internal medicine residency. I was attracted to internal medicine primarily because I liked working in a team environment and I liked the puzzle aspect of the work (why does this patient have this medical issue and why it is a problem today?). I also enjoyed the opportunity to develop longer term relationships with patients and their families. I enjoyed looking after cancer patients and found that medical oncology was a subspecialty that allowed me to continue using my internal medicine skills while working in a multidisciplinary team at a cancer centre. I completed my medical oncology residency at the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver and then came to Kingston to do a fellowship.

I see patients with lymphoma and skin cancers. My clinics are five half days a week and I see about 150 new cancer patients per year. In the time that I am not seeing patients I am doing equal parts administration and clinical research. My research areas are broad as I like variety in research; early phase clinical trials, translational medicine and quality of care research. I have an active research program and I have many students and residents involved in my research projects. My administrative role increased significantly since took on the role of Division Head in 2012 to 20 full and part time physicians.

My typical day is a balance between meetings and patient care. As physicians we take turns being on call and covering patients in the hospital so there are certainly days that are busier than others. Cancer treatment is very team based and I work with multiple other physicians (surgeons, dermatologists, radiation oncologists, radiologists, pathologists) as well as nurses, social workers and many others. No one person could manage these complicated patients alone and it truly takes a team. To help manage these challenging patients we have regular multi-disciplinary case conferences (MCC) where we discuss a group plan of care. Many people who do not work in the cancer centre feel that it must be very depressing or sad place to work but my experience is exactly the opposite –there is a lot of camaraderie and laughter and we never feel that we are dealing with anything alone.

Over my career I have seen amazing advances in cancer treatment and many patients that would have died of cancer at the beginning of my career are now being treated effectively and are living quite well with their cancer or cured of their cancer. It is very rewarding to see how the work in some of the early clinical trials that I have been involved in have so quickly made a difference for patients. In my administrative role I have been able to influence the experience of cancer patients in our region by opening up many smaller chemotherapy clinics so patients do not need to travel as far for their treatment.

When I am not at the cancer centre my time revolves around my family – I have a nine year old son who loves to play soccer and swim. My husband is very supportive and I would certainly not be able to balance my work and home without that support and I have a very supportive network of family and friends. I work at making sure I keep myself healthy and active and that I spend as much time as possible with my family. Seeing my patients go through life changing diagnosis does reinforce regularly how important it is to enjoy the moment and enjoy what you have. It has definitely helped to live in a smaller city and have a very manageable commute to work as this has really helped me balance my work and home life.

When the COVID lockdown happened I was in Australia on sabbatical. It was a big scramble to get home and quarantine. COVID has been a significant event for healthcare everywhere – we did learn about pandemics in medical school and I did experience AIDS and SARS but this pandemic has been very different from those experiences and truly is affecting every part of our lives. At the cancer centre we never did work from home or lock down because our patients needed to continue being seen. This resulted in the month of April being one of the busiest I have ever worked but I do feel that we have a better sense of what the near future is going to be now.

At the cancer centre we did switch to assessing many patients over the phone instead of in person and we also needed to institute COVID screening, COVID swabbing and many other changes. In addition I had the challenge in the spring of supporting homeschooling (although my husband did much of that work!) and keeping my son busy but now he is at school and he is much happier. I am very pleased at how everyone is adjusting to this new normal and I do think that working together we will get through this. Much of the teaching and research I was doing slowed down over the initial pandemic closures but now it is almost back to normal aside from no travel (I used to travel either nationally or internationally about every 6 weeks) - we are all learning to become Zoom experts! On the positive side COVID has given me much more family time and has slowed things down and allowed more time to reflect which has been an unintended gift. I feel very grateful that I chose a career in science and would not change anything!

If you have a question, ask me in the comments!