“I’m really small and really tiny, and so I’ve had to learn to—I’ve had to learn to be forceful and, you know, to let people know that I mean what I’m saying… But I’ve always tried to be nice, too.” - Dr. Saha
Intelligence, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, can be defined as, “the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (such as tests)”. Now every person I’ve interviewed is without a doubt intelligent--every physician in the world is intelligent. But Dr. Saha, a plastic surgeon I recently interviewed, was perpetually told she wasn’t intelligent, despite evidence that proved otherwise.
Dr. Saha, a plastic surgeon at Oaklawn Hospital in Marshall, Michigan, is a petite, kind woman with a sweet smile. She is Indian and immigrated to America in 1997 from Nigeria, where she grew up. In Nigeria, Dr. Saha went to a missionary school.
Throughout her life, Dr. Saha had multiple moments where she knew she wanted to become a doctor. However, the experience she drew on particularly happened when she was in grade school. In Nigeria, there were missionary doctors that worked at the hospitals where she lived. One day when Dr. Saha was a young girl, the missionary doctors invited her and her classmates into the operating room to look around. “I thought that that would be really neat to do,” Dr. Saha said about her experience. This experience furthered her desire to want to become a doctor.
Dr. Saha went to Washington College in Maryland for her undergraduate education. There, she majored in Biology and minored in Chemistry. When Dr. Saha went to college, her initial plan was to become a doctor. However, the more Dr. Saha thought about it, the more she realized how much of a commitment medicine was. Dr. Saha wanted to be certain she wanted to be a physician before applying to medical school. So, Dr. Saha graduated in three years and went to work at Johns Hopkins University as a laboratory technician for two years.
After her first year working as a laboratory technician, Dr. Saha knew it wouldn’t be her career. “There was no going up, it was just, you know, you’re a lab tech forever unless you do something else.” She decided she was going to try applying to medical school to become a physician.
A hurdle Dr. Saha experienced while gearing up to go to medical school was paying for the tuition. Dr. Saha, as she was an international student, didn’t qualify for financial aid. This meant that she had to scramble to find money to pay for her medical education. So while working, Dr. Saha worked for her green card so she could get aid to pay for her medical school. Dr. Saha describes this as the most challenging obstacle in her medical journey. “That was a big hurdle.”
Dr. Saha applied to medical school and ended up going to Georgetown in D.C. for her M.D.
In medical school, Dr. Saha did really well during the first two years. “Back then, the first two years was basically really hard college.” It was filled with mainly books and exams, so she didn’t have much of a problem. However, in her third year, patient care began. This meant she had to go out and take care of patients and learn how to actually become a doctor. Patient care is evaluated by attending’s (physicians who are already practicing) and focuses less on exams. Instead, the attending’s evaluate how you speak and interact with the patients, as well as how you diagnose them. This makes the grading in the third and fourth years of medical school more subjective. “I had people, like, correcting my English and, you know, just being really… I don’t know… Demeaning… Condescending, maybe, towards me more so than my tall, white colleagues… They would say things like, you know, ‘She’s got a poor fund of knowledge.’…I was like, ‘How can you say that?
My scores are all, you know, through the roof. But they didn’t know that. They would just make up their mind about what they believed they saw, I guess.” This was very difficult for Dr. Saha, who had done really well her first two years of medical school and had aced all of her exams. Dr. Saha felt she had to perpetually try and prove her intelligence to her attending’s. “So that was weird, because my first two years, all of my grades were honors, and then my third and fourth years, all my grades were pass.”
Toward the end of medical school, students have a series of exams named the United States Medical Licensing Exams (the Boards Exams). Essentially, these exams dictate which types of residency you get into, similar to the MCAT with medical school. The better you do on the Boards, the more competitive you are as a resident applicant. Dr. Saha did extremely well on her Boards exams, which proved to be more impactful in her residency process than the scores from her attending’s. “So it was okay. As long as I worked hard and got good scores, I did well.”
Overall, medical school was not a positive experience for Dr. Saha. She said she had no role models during this time.
After her Boards exams, Dr. Saha applied to residency programs and got into “the Ohio State University”, she said with a giggle. That’s where she ended up going to for her general surgery residency. During residency, Dr. Saha experienced a lot of the same problems she did in medical school with people criticizing her intelligence because of her accent.
However, since there was an exam every year in residency, Dr. Saha was able to ‘prove’ her intelligence to her peers very quickly.
When I asked Dr. Saha if she had a role model, she replied with, “I had to really, really think about it [the question], because I couldn’t think about anyone for a while and I was like, ‘That’s really sad.’” However, Dr. Saha eventually recalled two role-models throughout her residencies. In her general surgery residency, Dr. Saha was inspired by a breast surgeon. Dr. Saha described the surgeon as “really good and really nice.” In her plastic surgery residency, Dr. Saha’s role model was a community surgeon who was not affiliated with Ohio State University. However, Dr. Saha looked up to her.
What’s some advice Dr. Saha would like to give to aspiring physicians?
“Really what we talked about. You just work your hardest and not worry about people putting you down… Unfortunately, that subjective part of your grading system is always going to be there and there’s not really anything you can do about it except to do really, really well on your tests, because ultimately that’s really all that matters. And if you do well on those tests, it just opens up your opportunities so much more, you know? Now you can choose which specialty you’re going into. If you don’t do well on those tests, you can’t really choose that. You don’t really have any control over your future if you don’t do well [on the tests].”
“And then residency is really, really tough. Because, well, you’re basically an indentured servant. You can be treated that way. I think the important thing to remember about residency is that the goal is not to please your attending’s. The goal is for you to become a good surgeon… Or a good doctor… And as long as you learn that, that’s really all that matters. And pleasing everyone else should be secondary… I feel like most residents are always trying to please their attending’s. I mean really, that’s the way you get burned out because it’s impossible to please them.”
“Always in your head be thinking, ‘Okay, I like the way this person did this, but I like the way that person did that.’ And kind of start to create your own way that you’re going to be doing things because that’s the ultimate goal.”
Dr. Saha has a fascinating story and is now a thriving plastic surgeon. She is a wonderful role-model for everyone, but particularly for international students hoping to obtain their M.D. from a medical school in America. Dr. Saha is a great reminder that the tasks in life that we sometimes feel are impossible can be done.
Thanks, everyone! See you next Sunday!
E.F.