Jason Little '92 Just Keeps Moving Forward
by Gary James '10
Jason Little ‘92 is the type of guy who rolls with the punches. Despite his concerns, life’s setbacks, or things out of his control, the doctor knows he cannot throw his hands up and retreat. He has to keep going for his sake and for the sake of those around him. When Little, a Phi Kappa Psi who played soccer and was in the Sphinx Club, graduated from Wabash, he had changed his major from biology to history.
"One of the hardest things for me to do was tell my parents that I had dropped out of the biology program," Little said.
But he did tell Mom and Dad and he continued his post graduate education in medicine at Indiana University for the next four years. He then took part in a three-year Pediatric Residency Program at Lutheran General Hospital in Chicago where he learned about the types of issues he would be facing as a Pediatric Physician.  Little took a position as Pediatric Emergency Physician at a Children’s Medical Center in Dallas as part of a fellowship to learn about sub-specialty training. He is now an Emergency Physician at Saint Vincent’s Pediatric Emergency Department in Indianapolis.
"I take care of kids from pregnancy to age 18," Little said. "We handle everything from broken bones to routine illnesses." He also likes the Emergency Department schedule. "The good thing about ER is that once you’re done for the day, you’re done." But Little pointed out that while working the ER, the time spent there can be unpredictable. The days can be easier or more difficult depending on who and what comes in through the [Emergency Room] doors." He described the challenge of dealing with a patient’s death. "I’ve had many patients die," he said. "And it’s very emotional. "It’s an important part of my job to enjoy being with children, to be reassuring to their parents, and to ensure them their [children] are being taken care of. So when one dies you cry for the mothers who have just lost their babies but you do that and you see 50 other patients waiting on you. You have to keep going." Little also sees up close an issue in the news a lot - the uninsured. "We have a large uninsured population," he said. "There is a misconception that people don’t have the access to healthcare but by default everyone has access via the ER. But it’s not the most efficient way to handle it. We provide care to everyone. I see the problem as the healthcare system is wrought with inefficiencies. People should have access to healthcare but they should have to participate as a consumer in the process." Little has seen that even people with health insurance wait until their problems become more serious before they get pro-active about their health. "The ultimate goal of my profession is to provide efficient care," he said. And you have to have the ability to multi-task between checking lab results, respiratory status, or other things." The test, he pointed out candidly, is not a linear one. It goes back and forth. And looking back at his years at Wabash, he feels like the rigors of the Wabash experience and the demands and expectations of his professors and other Wabash men prepared him to deal with some of the issues he deals with today.
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