[MUSIC PLAYING] I am Dr. Liz Ebbens. I'm a pediatric emergency physician at Comer Children's Hospital and in the ER, I treat everything. I treat coughs, colds, broken bones, critical illness, critical injuries. There's really not something I don't treat. If your child comes to the ER, I'm going to be the one managing it. I chose to become a physician because, well, the primary reason is that I've been fascinated by the science of medicine since I was a child. My mom would tell you that anytime one of my three younger brothers got an injury, I would be right there on the scene to dry up the blood, put on a band-aid, I was not scared of icky gross things. Was always really in the mud. Loved hunting bugs. Very fascinated by the natural world. But I think the reason I became a doctor is because I like teaching that information, and I like teaching it to lots of different people. I like teaching it to medical students and residents. I like teaching it to my patients, even if they're little littles, even if they're like two-years-old, they can understand something about their bodies. I have two-year-olds right now, and they understand where their eyes are, where their nose is, and they can tell me if they're in pain. And I like interacting with that age. And then I also like telling parents who have a wide variety of education levels and trying to interact with them and teach them about how their child's body is working and ways that they can help care for their kid at home. UChicago Medicine has a special place in my heart. I went to medical school here and developed a passion for the community on the south side of Chicago. I believe that Comer is a vital resource to the community. I believe it should exist. I believe that patients should be able to get high quality medical care down here, and I wanted to be a part of it. Also, I wanted to come back and be a part of the medical school in training the next generation of physicians. My philosophy of care is all about empowerment. When I see a patient or a family in the emergency room, I want to make sure that I address the reason why they're there and give them tools to feel more comfortable going home. A lot of the patients I see, I get to send home, but what that means is I'm sending home a child who might still have fevers, or a child who now has a cast that they need to manage at home. So if I don't empower families to care for their children at home, I'm not doing my job right. When I get up every morning, I know that each shift is going to be different. I never see the same patient every day. I never see the same sets of illnesses every day. Obviously, there are common things. I'm always going to see a baby with a fever, but I'm going to see a wide variety of different things that keep me invested, keep me thinking, keep me on my toes, and every single day I learn something new, and I apply that to my practice the next day. I love the ER because of that pace and because every day is different, but also because it requires such a collaborative team environment. My nurses, my child life specialists, my social workers, my respiratory therapists we all have to work together as a team to manage whatever the day throws at us. So we all come in ready, anticipating what the day will bring, and then we work together as a team to make sure we care for our patients effectively. And that mindset and that kind of let's get rolling, let's get the day going is just a fun place to be. [MUSIC PLAYING]