At St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Rachel Simon-Lee uses video to capture the most intricate surgical procedures for pediatric heart surgeons and surgeons-in-training. For patients and the family, she uses those same images to create “Your Heart Story,” a visual record of triumph over a major medical challenge. Simon-Lee selects what to focus on visually to explain complex heart procedures that patients and families take home.
In five years of working in the BJC system, Simon-Lee has become a subject matter expert in surgical videos of the heart.
“They are just so happy to see what their child was able to overcome, and the technique and expertise of the doctors,” she said. “It’s really cool.”
What’s also cool is that Simon-Lee already had quite a bit of video experience before producing hospital videos. The Nashville, Tennessee native toured with poetry/soul duo artists Floetry as their videographer during their “Sugar Water Tour” with Erykah Badu, Queen Latifah and Jill Scott. Simon-Lee said she toured with them for a dozen or so cities. From the final show in L.A., Simon-Lee produced a documentary, which she wound up selling to VH1.
“I was friends with Natalie [Stewart] and Marsha [Ambrosius], and when they were doing a special on VH1, they mentioned the footage,” Simon-Lee said. “VH1 called to see if I’d be willing to sell then raw footage and I did.”
Simon-Lee earned a bachelor of arts in communications and learned video production at Webster University in St. Louis. She worked at different production companies and in entrepreneurial pursuits for a few years before landing an internship at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
There, Simon-Lee recorded and edited videos for the hospital and for posting on social media and soon moved into the Media Services department, which serves all 12 BJC hospitals. She became the only person to do surgical video production.
When Children’s Hospital hired a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon, he wanted a fulltime video producer. Simon-Lee was asked if she was interested. She said, “Absolutely.”
“I never, ever thought I’d be doing medicine or health care or dealing with medical procedures, but I fell in love with it really, really quickly, because I got to learn something every day,” Simon-Lee said. “It utilizes a skill that I have. I love to edit – it’s telling a story in a very different kind of way.”
Last July, she moved to St. Louis Children’s Hospital, where she creates heart surgery videos fulltime for Pirooz Eghtesady, M.D. and Peter Manning, M.D. She remains in awe of what she notices from behind the camera when she sees an open heart.
“I know where the vessels are, I know what the aorta looks like, I know when the heart is facing to the right vs. facing to the left; I know when something looks a lot smaller than it should be,” Simon-Lee said. “It’s really sort of awesome.”
By the end of last year, and with the blessings of her supervisor, Simon-Lee created Heartwork Videos, to offer that same meticulous expertise to produce videos for other heart surgeons.
“I asked if I could do some freelance work, and I went past being a freelancer and decided to give this a real shot and do it as a startup,” Simon-Lee said, “because I know how valuable surgical video production is as far as an educational tool. And I know there are surgeons who don’t have people like me at their institution.”
She may have an opportunity to record some adult transplant procedures in the future. For now, expanding her work at the hospital and growing her business is what lies ahead for Simon-Lee. After all, there are more hearts to capture.
“Personally, I want to focus on getting more clients around the country and becoming a resource for surgeons who are educators and who are taking on the most challenging and unique cases,” she said. “When they come across these cases that are one-in-a-million, they can record it and they can teach a future generation who will repair these precious little hearts.”
