Episode 59: Dr Wes Ely - Treating with humanity

Dr Wes Ely is no stranger to rapid onset chronic illness.  He has been helping people deal with the debilitating effects of Post Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS) for many years and is co-director of the Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.  He also has personal first-hand experience of traumatic brain injury.

A pulmonary and ICU doctor, Dr Ely has turned his expertise to Long Covid patient care and advocacy whilst still handling all his PICS patients.  Far from being worn down by his immersion in persistent suffering, Dr Ely is a firecracker of energy, activity and knowledge.  He has used his understanding to develop effective programmes to engage Long Covid sufferers in treatment, care and support groups.  He has used his experience to write grants, papers and proposals.  And used his voice to write for numerous mainstream media platforms, giving patients a visibility which is often lacking with this invisible illness.

Dr Ely is prolific in his ability to read, absorb and utilise the information from the Long Covid literature being published.  Citing multiple papers over the course of this interview, he impresses the corroboration that each of these seems to offer, validating each other’s data and discoveries from Sweden (Lancet) to Switzerland (BMJ) to St Louis (Nature). 

He brings humanity and hope. His book ‘Every Deep Drawn Breath’ documents the experience of Long Covid sufferers, with all profits from the book going back to patients and their families.