Sarah Kandil, MD

For Sarah Kandil, MD, a pediatric intensive care doctor, the best part of her job is discharging a healthy child.

“I’ve seen children with life-threatening illnesses come in to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), and we don’t always know what the outcome will be,” Dr. Kandil says. “It’s so rewarding to see, a day or two later, that child smiling and walking out the door.”

Dr. Kandil also enjoys working closely with families. “When families first come into the PICU, they’re very scared. I want to reassure them that we're doing everything we possibly can to make their child better,” she says.

And because children can’t always tell you what is wrong, investigative work comes into play. “We often need to run a number of tests, and the nice part of the PICU is that we work closely with subspecialists, including cardiac and surgical specialists,” she says.

Dr. Kandil is also a deputy quality and safety officer for Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. Her work there strives to improve the quality and safety of care for all children. She has lead the hospital’s participation in several collaboratives, including work to reduce unplanned extubations, venous thrombotic events and most recently, improving sepsis outcomes.

“I have always been driven by a desire to make children better,” says Dr. Kandil, who is also an assistant professor of pediatric critical care at Yale School of Medicine. “Those rewarding cases where children recover motivates me to want to do more.”