The Explorers
Walk along with us and explore the steps University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences students take on their journey to discovering their education, careers and themselves.
A job where every
day is important
“It’s a real privilege to get to take care of some of the sickest patients in the hospital.”
Austin Anthony
Meet Austin Anthony, president of the School of Medicine Class of 2023. He is from Memphis, Tennessee, and went to Vanderbilt University. The first doctor in his family, he is doing a seven-year neurosurgical residency at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.
The First Step:
Serve
Anthony grew up working on his grandparents’ farm and wanted to work with his hands. He majored in biomedical engineering “because you get to build things, and these things can help people one day.”
He also worked in service industry jobs and found that he enjoyed working on a team and meeting new people.
With medicine, he realized, “You can still work with your hands. You can still leverage this biomedical engineering background for research. However, you’re also working in the service industry and meeting different people every day working on a team. So that’s what really led me to apply to medical school.”
“I was no stranger to hard work because I grew up working on the farm,” said Anthony. “So one thing I think is, wow, you know, med school is hard, but at least it’s inside, at least there’s air conditioning, it could definitely be worse!”
The Second Step:
Confirm
Knowing that neurosurgery has a reputation for being all-consuming, Anthony said, “I spent the first two years of medical school trying to find anything else.” But the demanding specialty kept drawing him back.
“It’s a real privilege to get to take care of some of the sickest patients in the hospital,” Anthony said. “Anytime you talk to a patient as a neurosurgeon, it’s a big deal. And it’s a privilege to have these conversations and to be the kind of person that gets to talk to people at these points in their lives. I just couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else.”
“I had to really reconfirm that over the first two years of medical school,” Anthony said. “I’m really happy about that because it’s such a commitment. You want to make sure you’re very sure about the decision at the end of the day. So I’m really glad that I took that time.”
The Third Step:
Contribute
Anthony volunteered with a program called Cut Hypertension. “We go to barber shops and we take the patrons’ blood pressures,” he explained. “And we go around the same time every week, so we started to see the same people. We’ll give them a card and start tracking their blood pressure just to make sure it’s not white coat hypertension.”
If they find a person’s blood pressure is high, they advise: “Maybe you should go talk to a PCP. And you know, we’ve had a lot of patients actually go see physicians and actually be started on first-line medications and things like that,” Anthony said.
The Next Steps
“My biggest mentor here was Dr. D. Kojo Hamilton. He’s also the program director of the neurosurgical residency here.”
The pair collaborated on a few papers, and Hamilton, professor, Department of Neurological Surgery, School of Medicine, advised Anthony on navigating the application and match process.
“Post-residency, my goal is to be involved in academic medicine and potentially a program director as I do see myself mentoring the next generation of neurosurgeons and helping teach,” Anthony said. “I can’t imagine myself going through my seven-year training program and not having thoughts on how I can improve the training and also not having a desire to train the next generation.”
Within neurosurgery, Anthony said, “I’ve been leaning towards more spine and trauma-focused. But I’m still pretty up in the air about what I’ll actually do.”
About the School of Medicine
The School of Medicine’s mission is to improve the health and well-being of individuals, communities and populations through cutting-edge research, innovative educational programs in medicine and biomedical science, and leadership in academic medicine.
We strive to implement this mission with the highest professional and ethical standards in a culture of diversity, inclusion and cultural humility. Our commitment is to foster an environment that enables all students, faculty, staff and the communities we serve to develop to their fullest potential.
