Episode #220: Baylor Scott & White Dermatology Residency Program

Definitely.

So that's a good lead into me asking you how you found your interest, specifically in Mohs surgery, and how you decided to pursue a Mohs fellowship.

Yeah, so and this will kind of tackle a little bit about my program, which is, uh, Baylor Scott & White Temple Medical Center.

Uh, Temple, Texas is about an hour north of Austin and two hours, uh, south of Dallas.

Uh, so we're kind of a rural-ish area.

Um, and I'm very fortunate that the residents here will get a lot of surgical exposure.

So, you know, within the first week of my residency as a PGY2 resident, I was taking layers, you know, first layer, second layers, um, i- in Mohs surgery.

And, you know, and you're doing all the closures too, whether it's a primary linear closure, complex linear closure, uh, flaps, grafts.

Uh, Dr. Housewright is our fellowship-trained Mohs surgeon here, and he's amazing and he lets all residents get very hands-on.

So we're very hands-on in terms of doing excisions, even within the first month of residency.

And then Mohs you're taking layers within the first couple of weeks of residency too.

So we're pretty hands-on in terms of surgical training.

And, you know, by the end of my residency I'm gonna have, you know, couple hundred cases where I'm primary surgeon, whether it's doing the flaps and doing all the Mohs surgery.

I've definitely almost close to 300 excisions right now as a resident, and I'm graduating in less than two months.

So I think, you know, w- shadowing as a student, uh, is kind of hard to...

You know, you're not doing the stuff, you're just observing.

But so I wasn't that interested in Mohs, but it was actually starting in residencies when I realized, yeah, I actually like this.

This is really nice.

It's a cool specialty.

I like, you know, the reading histopathology aspect of it, uh, clearing the cancer under the microscope, and I like the surgical aspect of it, whether it's, you know, the surgical removal or just planning the reconstruction of the, uh, of the defect.

And I didn't realize that until I was actually in residency, not as a medical student.

And I felt like with the exposure I got here, that definitely...

And with Dr. Housewright's amazing mentorship, and he's just all, all around a great guy, um, I, I know I wanted to be kind of like him, and so I...

That's what pushed me to pursue a fellowship in Mohs surgery.

That's a cool opportunity that you had to, well, number one, like you said, jump right into residency and start doing, uh, openings and closures.