In short
The Retrievals Podcast Summary
Podcast Overview Title: The Retrievals Description: An investigative series exploring the underreported issue of severe pain experienced by patients during C-sections and the efforts to address this problem.
Episode Details
Episode Title
S01 Bonus: Did this happen to you? Episode Description A message from Susan Burton, addressing listeners and inviting feedback and personal stories related to patient experiences.
Key Points from the Transcript
Host's Introduction
- Susan Burton introduces herself as the host of *The Retrievals*.
- She mentions the production of upcoming episodes (four and five) while sharing additional content to bridge previous discussions with future ones.
Community Engagement
- Burton thanks listeners for sharing their personal stories.
- Highlights feedback from former patients at the Yale Clinic who are learning about the potential explanations for their pain during treatment.
Reflection on Accountability
- Burton expresses frustration regarding Yale's response to the issues raised in the series.
- She emphasizes the importance of accountability for a renowned institution like Yale, particularly in relation to patient care.
Key Arguments
- Institutional Responsibility:
- Burton argues that Yale, with its substantial endowment and resources, has a duty to uphold rigorous protocols to protect patients.
- The comparison of access to office supplies against access to addictive drugs illustrates the need for tighter controls and accountability.
- Concerns over Oversight:
- She critiques Yale's approach of attributing issues to a "bad egg," suggesting it is insufficient given the institution's power and resources.
- Burton insists that a comprehensive system must be in place to safeguard patients, reflecting on the broader implications of institutional accountability.
Future Content
- Burton indicates that the upcoming episodes will delve deeper into the experiences of patients and the efforts to hold Yale accountable.
Conclusion
- The episode serves as a transitional piece, setting the stage for deeper investigations in future episodes while encouraging dialogue within the community regarding patient experiences and institutional responsibility.
Call to Action
- Listeners are encouraged to share their stories, feedback, and any insights they might have related to the issues discussed in the podcast.
Additional Information
- Subscribe: Available on [Apple Podcasts](http://nytimes.com/podcasts), [Spotify](http://nytimes.com/podcasts), and other podcast applications.
- For feedback or story pitches, listeners can contact: serialshows@nytimes.com.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02This is Susan Burton, the host of The Retrievals. We're making episodes four and five this week, but I have some tape that I wanted to put into the feed. I'll play that in a moment. But first I want to say thank you to everyone who's been writing to me with their own stories. Among the people who've been writing are former patients at the Yale Clinic. Some Yale fertility patients are hearing this series and learning for the first time that there may be another explanation for the pain they experienced during their treatment there. I will say more about this in the last two episodes. I'd love to hear from any Yale patients or any Yale staffers.
0:45The tape I want to play this week is one of my favorite pieces of tape, one I've tried to fit into almost every episode and it keeps not fitting. But it actually belongs right here, because it's a perfect bridge between where we've been in this story and where we're going. It gets us from the patients and Donna to what happened at the clinic and to how to hold Yale accountable for that. The tape is from Leah, the lecturer at Yale. I love the way she goes from high to low here, from a towering institution to the supply closet. I think the thing that I, and I should say this about what it was like to be at the sentencing, is how little Yale came up.
1:28I was really infuriated by that. I am deeply, deeply concerned about Yale identifying a bad egg and saying we eliminated a bad egg. You have a world-class institution that has, I think, over a$40 billion endowment now. Some of the wealthiest people in the world and the smartest people in the world run this institution. institution. You have a certain responsibility if you have that much power. And if you're going to be responsible for the lives of women and the lives of their families, it's not enough to say, oh, we just hired a bad person and, you know, fentanyl, there's a fentanyl epidemic in the country.
2:23That, I mean, that's in fact true, but, um, you don't just like walk into an office building and I can't, let me just put it this way. At an incredibly rich institution, I can't just walk into an office supply, one of the office supply rooms and grab anything I want. I can't, I literally can't. Like there's a whole thing. Like how many file folders you want? How many, how much paper do you need like do you need a you know like it you can't just I'm telling you like people who have named chairs at Yale are like oh god I'm having a hard time getting you know whatever pencils yeah pens there's no chalk in the room so you know if you're gonna have a room that has drugs that are addictive, you better have serious protocols in place to protect your patients and protect the people working there.
3:27You just do. And someone needs to be responsible and answer to that. The patients will try to get Yale to answer to that. And so will we. That's next week on Episode 4 of The Retrievals, a production of Serial Productions and The New York Times.
From the publisher
A message from Susan Burton.
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