Personally Speaking
For me, surgery offers the best balance of procedural medicine and cerebral medicine – this allows me to treat the entire patient. The procedural part involves invasive intervention to cure or improve disease, and the cerebral part involves the medical treatment of disease to either help forego an operation or to optimize a patient before and after surgery. I always wanted the broadest training available and I felt like a general surgery residency provided that. I consider myself a minimally invasive GI tract surgeon, although I also perform complex hernia surgery, endoscopy, and other procedures.
I think my greatest strengths as a physician are my ability to connect with patients, my passion for what I do, and my tireless pursuit of optimal results. Some nights, I lose sleep thinking about complicated patients and how I can best help them.
I enjoy taking care of patients and I love doing surgery. Witnessing outcomes like I’ve seen with the FreshStart program brings everything full circle for me and that is very gratifying. Seeing patients healthier, happier and better adjusted following whatever surgical intervention they’ve had makes my job fulfilling.
