July 1, 2026 Salus Health Care Forum

In attendance at the twenty-second Salus forum held on July 1, 2026 were Mitch Applegate, William Bergquist, Jeremy Fish, Bill Gillanders, Perry Pugno, Gay Teurman, Mark Vukalcic, and Jack Westfall. The Trigger topic for this forum was provided by Drs. Vukalcic and Teurman who focused on the impact of anesthetic drugs on patients in contemporary hospitals.

Following is a narrative based on the dialogue that took place during this forum. It begins with the short formal presentation made by Gay Teurman and Mark Vukalcic:

Jeremy

Well, without further ado, we’ll have Gay and Mark introduce us to anesthesia and mental behavioral health, or how do you want to frame it?

Gay

I’d say behavioral health. One of the reasons it was such an intriguing topic for me was because last year I was hospitalized. It was an outpatient procedure, but I’m not a frequent flyer. I do my best to stay away, not even walk in the doors to visit people if I can, because I would prefer not to be in a hospital setting ever. I don’t mean occupationally, I mean as a patient.

So I was speaking with my surgeon and the topic of anesthesia came up and he got to talking about things that might happen neurologically, and he knew that I was in the business of treating people through holistic care. So we had a little bit of a dialogue about anesthesia and what might happen, and it was interesting because I’d never had that sort of rapport, not having a lot of surgery in my life. And it piqued my interest because I got very concerned about the fact that I, as a mental health professional, have never really been taught or treated people as though anesthesia might be contributing to some of the symptom array that I see clinically.

It made me wonder how many behavioral health clinicians or behavioral health professionals don’t even think about the components that anesthesia might be contributing to their overall well-being. So I pose that as a possible topic. Mark and I had a really great discussion two or three weeks ago, maybe it’s been a month now, about how can we do a better job as professionals with regards to what types of mental health issues might show up or symptoms that might show up post-anesthesia, or from multiple events of anesthesia, which a lot of you folks have been exposed to, many of these that we talked about, the frequent fires.