Interview: Dr Abdul Aziz Aadam, Medical Director at Northwestern Medicine

You are also the Medical Director of the International Health programme with Northwestern. Can you tell us about the programme and how you ensure patients receive the best care across the health system?

Northwestern Medicine has built a global reputation for excellence one patient at a time. International patients experience truly personalised care, with access to the most advanced treatment options backed by our commitment to superior quality, academic excellence, scientific discovery and patient safety. We have clinical champions across every service line who work directly with our international patients to ensure they have personalised and culturally informed clinical care. We also understand the importance of collaboration between a patient’s physician in their home country and our physicians at Northwestern in developing a personalised treatment plan. I frequently support those conversations to ensure we can provide patients with a seamless experience from before they arrive until well after they go home. 

I leverage my existing relationships and build new ones to ensure all our patients, regardless of their diagnosis, can benefit from the Northwestern Medicine collaborative care mode

How has your experience as an interventional gastroenterologist with specialised expertise in gastrointestinal oncology informed your work as a Medical Director?

It is an honour and privilege to work closely with highly specialised experts across different specialties every day, ranging from colorectal surgeons to oncologists to interventional radiologists. Through collaboration and teamwork, we have been able to deliver truly exceptional patient care. In my role as Medical Director for Northwestern Medicine International Health, I leverage my existing relationships and build new ones to ensure all our patients, regardless of their diagnosis, can benefit from the Northwestern Medicine collaborative care model. We are proud to work with patients who have complex clinical needs where teamwork allows us to look at their needs from different perspectives and develop the best treatment plan possible.

What support do you provide for international patients?

Patients come to Northwestern Medicine from across the globe for care in every one of our 39 medical specialties. The International Health team does a fantastic job of supporting patients and their families, from the moment someone decides to come to NM all the way through their transition back home. The team consists of care coordinators, financial coordinators, interpreters, and administrative staff, who work together daily to ensure every patient has customised support, ranging from translated medical records to travel and accommodation support, to scheduling their full treatment plan, to providing transparency on one’s financial responsibilities. Our mission is to treat patients like family, and we work as a team to realise that mission for each of our patients.

How do you make sure that international patients receive personalised care?

Every patient has an assigned care coordinator and financial coordinator to provide them with personalised care. I am also deeply involved in every patient’s care, whether it is hearing updates from the team to confirm everything is on track or stepping in to work with clinical teams and families to resolve questions or work through challenges. My favourite part of the role is when I get to do the rounds of our patients and hear from them directly about the exceptional care and service they have received.

In what way does working in a multidisciplinary team help you to incorporate the latest research and state-of-the-art technology into your care plans?

Working in a multidisciplinary team gives me the opportunity to learn from people in other specialties and understand their different viewpoints. I am challenged every day in my clinical practice to solve incredibly complex situations. I lean on the collective expertise of my colleagues to change the paradigm of how we approach complex problems. For example, working with interventional radiologists, we discovered that patients were left with percutaneous biliary drains often indefinitely. We worked together to develop a new protocol in which patients could transition from external drains to internalised stents within two to four weeks. We coined the protocol ‘No drain left behind’ to signify the importance of such an intervention on a patient’s quality of life. This has led to development of research protocols and published manuscripts on this topic to ensure that we continue to challenge ourselves to innovate and help advance the field of medicine.

Working in a multidisciplinary team gives me the opportunity to learn from people in other specialties and understand their different viewpoints

In an ever-growing medical sector, what’s next for Northwestern Medicine International Health?

As we continue to see Northwestern Medicine at the forefront of clinical innovation and discovery – for example conducting the first lung transplants for patients with lung cancer through our DREAM programme – we know there is an opportunity for us to continue supporting patients from across the globe who need the singular expertise we can offer. Furthermore, we are committed to making Northwestern Medicine a pillar for global health by improving health around the world through advisory services, education, and research.