Why I became a Doctor (Full Story)

[Music] [Applause] are you guys doing everybody hear me okay yeah I was talking to actually some of the students and it reminded me how old I am I was here was it four years ago some of the students say they've met me when they were freshmen and now they're seniors so just reminds me of how time quickly time passes by and how old I am so thank you guys for having me it's a really a honor to come back for those who don't know I actually graduate from UTSA a long time ago when I didn't have a basketball team or I'm sorry a football team I graduated in 2007 so and this place has definitely changed a lot since the last time I was here so it's always a pleasure to come back and speak to a similar group which I was a part of when I was here as well so for those who don't know me I am dr. Antonio Webb I'm a fifth year orthopedic surgery resident six months away from graduating reading see next year I'll be going to do a spine fellowship to be a spine surgeon in Plano Texas so it's at one of your fellowship so you guys are gonna learn about a little bit about me and my story today but a little bit more about me I'm from Shreveport Louisiana that's where I grew up and was raised I went to a middle school called Hollywood middle school and went to a Fair Park Medical Careers magnet program and that's the reason why I'm a doctor today because of that program I always wasn't the perfect kid you may think about doctors and you know they were perfect kids growing up did get into in trouble I was the complete opposite of that I got into a lot of trouble actually started hanging around the wrong crowd and it was actually one time in high school when I even thought about dropping out I went to my principal's office and then looked at my dad was there in the principal because I told the principal that I want drop out of school and she looked at me and she said so is this what you want to do we can make that happen and I looked at my dad and my dad had tears coming down his eyes and I've never seen my dad cry before until that day so I decided to stay in school and I'm glad I did in Louisiana where I grew up is actually the world's prison capitol they it has an incarceration rate higher than any other states in the u.s. and also higher than some countries like Iran Germany Iraq the incarceration rate in Louisiana is actually the highest out of any of these places and when I was growing up Shreveport was actually ranked the 12th most dangerous state and the u.s. it was say that one in three black males would go to prison at some time in their lifetime I saw this would be very true I've had several close family members that went to prison when I was younger my little brother went to prison and was sentenced to juvenile life sentence for armed robbery my little sister did time in prison and ever since I was younger my mom has been in and out of prison and on and off drugs my whole life my mom was actually shot and his paralyzed down paralyzed from her waist down from her drug addiction so this was very evident kind of growing up in Louisiana and I thought I was gonna fall victim to the streets as well but one thing that I did I made a vow to kind of stick to the books ever since this Medical Careers magnet program in Louisiana I decided that I wanted to be a doctor and it was then that I made that decision that I would do everything possible am I kind of mine and possible possibility to become a doctor and that's what I did and I stuck to it so what I did was I joined the US Air Force at age 17 I did ended up doing eight years in the Air Force went to Iraq in 2005 as a medic while in the military I went to school at nighttime I went to school that weekend on the weekends internet courses and it took me almost seven years to get my degree I finally in 2005 transferred to UTSA and finished my last two semesters but I probably went to about six different schools st. Philip's north was Vista Park University any school that I can possibly take a class at due to my military obligations I was working full-time in the military kept having to drop classes due to military obligations and I was wasn't gonna take no for answer if the military wants you to be all about that military and I just didn't really tell people that I was going to school I just got off work at 4 or 5 p.m. and went to school at nighttime or when I was working night shift I would work from 6:00 a.m. to I'm sorry 6 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. and then go to school from 7 to 12 to do it all over again so it prepared me well for residency you don't really sleep in residency so I was really prepared for that part and like I said I graduated from UTSA in 2007 so this is actually a picture of me and right outside of Baghdad in Iraq my job was a medic so we took care of all the wounded soldiers all the casualties that they were there the gunshot wounds the IEDs the blast injuries we saw it all it's actually the busiest most bombed and attacked base at that time in Iraq this is where we worked out of right here this is our camp basically we I was part of a group that can go anywhere in the world and set up a fully functional hospital and less than 24 hours so this is our hospital right here actually this is the front portion of the ER right here back here we had a ward where patients the general patients further back was the ICU we had a operating room cat-scan so anything that you can think of in a hospital in a wartime situation that's what we had and these bunkers right here are basically when we got attacked which was maybe 3 or 4 times per day when they shot rockets at us and grenades we would go into these bunkers put our put our gear on and then stay in there until we were told that it was okay to come out this is actually inside the one of the wards in the hospital most of these patients here are Iraqi they range from injuries from like I said blast injuries gunshot wounds car bombs all these patients had various injuries and this is where we took care of them this is a view over Baghdad right here and this picture here can you guys see anybody in that picture well they see you there's snipers up there there's a sniper right here sniper right there and one over here and these guys they took care of us while we were out there the enemy wasn't too far away it was they lived in the village that was maybe 100 200 yards away separated by a fence and what they would do is get our coordinates to our base in our camp and then shoot rockets at those coordinates so they actually came really close to hitting us I was actually in the country maybe for a couple days taking care of a wounded soldier and I just heard a go over my head and hit the ground what it was it was a rocket that had actually been shot close to her account maybe from here too back in the back but it was a dud it didn't explode it so the explosive ordnance team which is a portion of the military that detonates bumps they came and took care of the bomb but I'm glad that missile that they shot didn't go off because I probably wouldn't be here standing talking to you guys if it did so whenever I give talks always tell students that there's lots of different paths to reaching your goals whether you want to be a dentist a lawyer surgeon neurologist orthopedic surgeon hand surgeon ER doctor whatever it is did you want to be there's different paths to that and I tell students all the time about my kind of experience with my best friend growing up in Louisiana he's a cardiothoracic anesthesiologist and in high school he came up to me one day and he said that he wanted to go to college and in Louisiana when I described everything that was going on I knew I needed to get out of that environment or otherwise I would probably been in jail or dead so I told him that I didn't want to go to college I wanted to go in the military to basically gain some experience and also get out of Louisiana and he went off to college so I went to the military went to college got out of military went to medical school he went straight to college straight to medical school residency and he's like five years ahead of me as been a doctor but the reason why I say that is because we're both at the same kind of end go which has become a doctor but we took two different paths so if your friend is sitting next to you and they're taken in different routes or a different path they're going to take a year off a gap year or they're applying to a postback program or going to travel the world for a year that's okay you both will eventually get to that same end goal if you want to be a doctor so lots of different paths that you can take to ultimately reach your goal so these are some of the jobs that I had along this path I was a EMT we got trained in the military as EMTs critical care technician I worked in ICU doing that I also got my LVN and then a medic medical student and now orthopedic surgeon so in 2007 when I got off the military I started applying to medical school and I thought that my medical experience everything that I had been through and my history would actually help me to get into medical school but I was in for a rude awakening because when I applied I didn't get any interviews my first time and I think I applied to almost every program so I took it that really hard I got back up and I started applying again got some tutoring study for the MCAT a lot longer a lot harder took preparatory courses I took Kaplan and Princeton I'm still mad about how much I've paid for those courses then I kept applying apply for my second time I got maybe one or two interviews but then I got rejected again my second time so what I did was since that medical magnet program in Louisiana I told myself that I would do anything am I possible might to become a doctor so I wasn't going to give up and I tried again at my third time I ended up getting into a postback program at Georgetown and that's where I graduated from medical school but this is one of the letters here that I receive I won't say which school sent me this letter but they told me I wasn't a good fit for their institution I just keep this email as a reminder as motivation to me I looked back at this email and say I use it as motivation so so in medical school I went to Georgetown it's four years that you guys know it's competitive your first two years are in the classroom third and fourth year and the hospital and then you do residency registry you guys know what that means it means to reside you reside at the hospital so I asked you how they actually had my own room at the hospital I have a bed I have a frigerator I have a shower in my room so I'm there like all the time so but during my fourth year in medical school I was actually given the opportunity to go to Liberia to JFK hospital I went with one of my other classmates who is from there we went to go to emergency medicine and also general surgery and this is just a picture and the hospital one of the wards we were seeing a patient in doing our rounding and these windows here was the only source of like cool air the hospital didn't have any a traditional so I spent a lot of time by that window right there this is what they gave me to operate with this little gallon right here so we were actually doing a case I forgot we were redoing but I looked at him funny when they gave me this to put on instead of a sterile kind of gown this is a picture in the ER I think this kid back here had TB this kid here had I'm not sure but this lady here had a diabetic foot ulcer it's just astonishing to see some of the conditions that were there and patients that normally would get seen here and get treat it they just didn't happen there so I'm actually visited a couple schools while while I was there and talked to some of the students this was a grade school we asked you took a picture with the students afterwards and I saw some of the kids off in the corner they were kind of giggling and I don't know they were looking at me and maybe point in my direction and I went over to him I was like what are you guys laughing at and they basically said that my lips were really pink so I thought I was pretty funny so in red and see how do you choose a particular residency so you go through Medical College you go through Medical School first two years classroom then you start doing your rotations and you figure out what you want to do so one of my professors in medical school stated that in order to choose a specialty you have to think about four things money passion lifestyle or prestige and you have to figure out what's most important to you so if you want to make a lot of money you're gonna have to give up your lifestyle like a neurosurgeon they are in hospital all the time but they make a lot of money but their lifestyles is suffers because of that you want to be a pediatrician we need pediatricians good ones but they're the prestige is not there at the same time your your money is going to be a lot lower than a neurosurgeon so you have to figure out what is important to you and that's how I was taught to pick a specialty and the match process for those who don't know you interview there and year fourth year of medical school I interviewed at 14 places I went to Harvard Stanford Cleveland Clinic Baylor northwestern UT San Antonio ended up choosing this program here this is my number one choice out of all those programs and a computerized system kind of picks out they match you up with a particular program and it's called the match process and that happens every year during your fourth year in medical school I came across this one day that was pretty funny how to choose a specialty so it says what's the problem if you like everything family medicine is probably a good you know you can deliver babies you can treat patients with diabetes or hypertension if you if your class your class hates you and I actually do you like to cut then yes what are you doing you're your free time if you like driving shiny cars around LA you can go into plastic surgery if you like strip clubs I don't know why it says this or community if you like penis jokes you can be here while just so if you just happened to find yourself and you just you're just dumbfounded it can't figure out what you want to go into you can just use this as a supplement so or communiques urger e-residency it's five years too long five years and then you do optional one-year fellowship you can do sports medicine spine surgery which is what I'm doing foot and ankle oncology trauma joints hand surgery so lots of different options that you can choose from and it's similar to medical school when you interview I had to interview for fellowship as well so I went on maybe twelve interviews for fellowship and similar process to interview in for medical school as well as residency but in our program most programs are pretty similar we have weekly lectures that are taught by professors so when I got into residency I was like man I made it I don't have to go to class anymore but I was in for a rude awakening so you find out that we have lectures each week our work hours how many hours you think I got you guys think I work a week eighty Lisa one thousand then I don't know if I'd be able to do that so it ranges right now I'm on trauma trauma surgery I was actually on call last night I'm trauma surgeries our busiest rotation which when the patient comes in with a gunshot wound I've seen a patient come in from a plane crash and then his wife ran behind him and said I told you not to go up there sorry yelling at him stabbings car accidents people jumping off bridges suicide attempts everything you see as a trauma and last night it was just me and an intern I was in the hospital I slept most of the night because I'm a chief resident but he was up running around throughout most of the night but it a Burrage it depends on which rotation your own trauma surgery is a busier rotation I probably average about 120 hours a week I usually work 30 hours every three days so I was on call last night today is Monday right someone called again on the Wednesday so when I go in around 5:30 in the morning and I get off the next day I don't know when work is done ten or eleven o'clock twelve o'clock sometimes sometimes later so it gets better though like my intern last night was running around kept calling me and waking me up throughout the night about different questions that he had which is okay I was in that same position but I get to sleep at night and and study or do whatever while the younger kind of residents get to do most of the work so that's how it operates and read and see and once you're done with a medical school I thought also that the testing would end testing never ends as a doctor so you're gonna always take a test whether that it's a in training exam every year November and read and see we have a eight hour test and it covers anything an orthopedic surgery from anatomy physiology from hand surgery foot ankle surgery I also had an organic chemistry question on my test last year about like the krebs cycle no Agana Crimson's about is biochemistry right the krebs cycle so that's every year that's actually coming up in about three weeks and then after your residency we take our board exam to become board certified so I have that coming up in July of this year so testing never ends and even after you finish your registry and all your training you have to take a certification exam every few years so get used to testing learn how you test best and just develop really strong study habits kind of early on those these things that will really help you in the long run so as a orthopedic surgeon any people have broken a bone before where's your break yeah your wrist did you get a fix you did okay anybody else what'd you break you ready to everybody's breaking their wrist was both of your feet Wow what were you doing you fell yeah you broke something yeah I've actually never broken a bone before which I think I've actually had an injury to my hand I was playing basketball across this guy over he went the other way and I'm just playing but I think I had it's got a gang keepers thumb but I've never actually broken a bone but as orthopedic surgeons I fix basically bones for a living patient comes in to the ER they break their hip they can't walk because of their broken hip and I can take him to surgery and give them a hip replacement or fix their wrist like they said any long bones like your tibia your femur that's what we're competing surgeons do in spine surgery patient has a disc herniation or it's called spondylolysis which is a slippage over your vertebrae we fuse the back for different reasons so that's sponsors depending on your specialty that will dictate what type of surgeries you do one particular one particular specialty is sports medicine this is rg3 here who tore his ACL and this is Paul George and actually a game who broke his tibia and each of these sports teams they have physicians who work for him their orthopedic surgeons and they take care of these injuries so this is a tibia fracture here this is we see we see a lot of these actually fixed one of these last night and what we do is we put a metal rod we go through their knee here and put it on the inside of their bone and it kind of stabilizes the bone until the Hills this is actually what Paul George has when he broke his tibia this is a patient that I did maybe a month ago who had this fracture of his Center inner truck fracture here and also had a this is the femur he had a femoral shaft fracture so what I did was I took him to surgery you can see how many staples I had to put in him that was a big incision and I put a metal right through his knee here and went up through the bone I put some wires around this area here and I put a screw up top right here I actually was looking at home and I found this is a similar rod it's called a GHS dynamic hip screw and basically we use this to fix patient's hips this is one of the ways this is a who broke their wrists who's that you have a plate like this your wrist you didn't see it yeah so this is a little plate that we use to fix wrist fractures this is a stem that we use some patient who has a hip fracture we put the stem inside of their bone and this is the metal cut that goes inside their hip right here you guys can pass these around so that's titanium titanium has a Young's modulus did you guys learn about that really close to bone so that's why we use titanium implants so this is a picture of the distal radius like we said this is a fracture here we go in and put a plate and some screws really dangerous area right here you have your radio artery your your tendons and stuff like that so you really have to know your Anatomy and this is a patient patient that I did a hip replacement on she came in after she fell and I went in and did a hip replacement and as a chief resident it's we get a lot of autonomy so it's just me in a another resident my staff usually comes in he looks ask me do I do need anything do I feel comfortable doing the case and I do the case so that's what residency is all about it's about you get autonomy as you go up in through the years a joint surgeon that's a fellowship that you can do anyone has a grandmother or a grandfather who has a hip or a knee replacement yeah so this is what you do you have your knees in place awesome how are they doing yeah she did how's your knee done thanks six years good so this is a specialty in orthopedics that patients who need hip or knee replacements or reconstructive aspects of their hip your knee we wear these space suits here to protect us from all the fluids and this is me about to do a hip replacement this is me and surgery here and this is how it looks once we open up the knee these are metal implants that we cut the femur and also cut the tibia and that's what it looks like on the x-ray afterwards and unique aspect of this is we use navigation basically a computer that tells us where to make our cuts so everything is really precise so this is a computer navigation that we can input the patient's data and it gives us endpoints we apply these instruments here and it's how we cut our are they bone from the tibia and also the femur so foot and ankle was another specialty that you can do in orthopedics this is a patient 15 years old who had an ATV accident and came in with this wound on the outside of the his foot here when that happens we need to cover this area there's bone there's tendons there that need to be covered so we actually involved this guy who's a plastic surgeon he's a hand surgeon and what they do they provide coverage for us so in this case here we took a muscle from one part of the body we took the artery the nerve and all of the connections between that muscle and we hooked it up to the bottom portion of the foot here so how long do you guys need that case to 48 hours man I would it's about 13 hours so a lone case this is just a picture of the vessel here we use a microscope to tie up the artery and the de nerve it's almost like the size of a pencil lead so you can imagine you you have to have really steady hands to suture up a nerve or artery this is what it kind of looks like after everything kind of Hills up this is oncology orthopedic oncology cancer of the bone soft tissue patient who has osteosarcoma or synovial sarcoma different types of cancer of the bone this is one of the procedures here that we I've done assisted in maybe two or three of these it's called a rotation plasti which if a patient has a cancer of their femur this bone right here and the tumor is so large that if we take out that portion of the tumor their leg will be really short so what we do is we cut that portion of the bone out and we turn their leg around so their ankle here is their new knee so it goes into this prosthesis here and that patient can run they can walk and play basketball or do any type of sports so this was a young kid that we did I think he was maybe nine or two osteosarcoma [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] my name is London I happen to be 19 years old and today was my first time in beating dr. Angelo he's been one of my absolutely biggest hits bracelets for the last few years I've lost pretty much every video he's produced and it's one of the very very most motivated pieces that I've ever been grateful to be a part of so I'm really really grateful very thankful

Channel: Antonio J. Webb, M.D.

Views: 83,108

Rating: 4.9761529 out of 5

Keywords: surgeon pay, surgeon salary, orthopedic surgery, ortho, residency life, life as a resident surgeon, MCAT, why I became a doctor, why become a doctor, pros of being a doctor, how to become a doctor, how to get into medical school, how to get into residency, how to become a surgeon, reasons to not become a doctor, UTSA, UTSA Pre med, life as a medical student, military doctor, how to never give up, why i never gave up

Id: zu-tMG2kdn8

Length: 29min 35sec (1775 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 16 2019