Academic title: Professor and chair of orthopaedic surgery; team orthopaedic surgeon for USA Jaguars
Joined the USA College of Medicine faculty: Jan 1, 2021
What does your position in the USA COM/USA Health entail?
My job as chairman involves setting a standard in professionalism, and establishing goals for service, education and research.
Professionalism
- Promote professionalism by practicing (HEAR) Humility, Empathy, Accountability and Resilience, and practice emotional intelligence to guide our interactions with patients, colleagues and staff. By modeling professionalism and integrating emotional intelligence into our daily interactions, we will provide patient care, teach, and perform research that will be unparalleled.
Service
- Provide patient care based upon scientifically sound outcomes-based research and, when evidence is not available, provide state-of-the-art innovative care and measure the quality of the outcomes.
- Expand USA’s footprint in the community, build a sustainable community outreach, work collaboratively with private practice orthopaedic groups, establish strong faculty social media presence, and increase healthcare access in underserved communities.
- Recruit, hire, retain and cultivate USA orthopaedic faculty in each subspecialty, among residents, medical students and staff while being fiscally responsible.
- Encourage diversity of ideas, people, race, beliefs, gender, sex and creed; and promote mutual respect and mindfulness.
Education
- Invest time, effort and energy to teach students and residents the art of orthopaedic surgery and prepare them to be leaders in medicine and the community.
Research
- Develop the infrastructure for a research division within the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery; and establish collaborations with USA departments of pharmacology, molecular biology, engineering and physical therapy.
What is your favorite or most rewarding part of your position?
I enjoy building teams, developing young surgeons’ academic careers, leading the orthopaedic team, providing care for all patients in lower Alabama, establishing a research program, and teaching students and residents.
Are you involved in any research or other initiatives in the College of Medicine?
Our department research will focus on orthopaedic outcomes, knee and elbow sports trauma injury risk and prevention. We will be heavily invested in identification of risk factors and prevention of post-traumatic arthritis after injury. We will partner with the basic scientists to investigate the role of amyloid production and mitochondrial dysfunction as it affects outcomes in trauma and infection at USA. My area of research is in knee ligament injury (ACL) risk assessment and prevention and specifically addresses the health disparity in ACL injury to play sports participation safer and improve athletic performance.
Do you have any advice for medical students?
My advice is to balance academic success with community service. It is important to have one’s application reflect the person and commitment to help our society be a better place to live. Remember to shoot for the stars and land on the moon. You will have accomplished lots in your experience. Do not sell yourself short.
Fail early, fail often, and learn from your failures. Failure leads to success.
Lastly, orthopaedic surgery is disproportionally underrepresented by women and people of color. I ask everyone to look at orthopaedics as a specialty. The orthopaedic surgery specialty provides care for all ages ranging from newborn infants with hip clicks to elderly with hip fractures. We provide services ranging from nonoperative to surgical management with arthroscopy, open surgery, and microvascular surgery. Please come talk to me if you have any interest in a great fulfilling career.
What are your hobbies/interests outside of work?
I love the outdoors. I ride a bike at 5 a.m. daily with a small group of friends in Baldwin County. I relax by sailing on Lake Champlain and hope to be sailing in Mobile Bay and the Gulf soon (looking for sailing buddies). I like to weight train and walk. I enjoy canoeing and kayaking and going on wilderness trips with my son. Lastly, I enjoy building quinzhees (snow caves) with the Boy Scouts and practicing winter survival in -20 degree weather (a joy I am actually happy to give up for some warm weather exercise)!
