Hometown: Mason City, Iowa 
Matched: Urology 
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

Why did you decide to become a doctor?

My mom has Type 1 diabetes. Some of my first memories were my dad waking me up in the middle of the night to convince my mom to drink orange juice for her low blood sugar. Something about hearing her son deliver that message helped comply with treatment, I suppose. That ability to help out gave me a sense of purpose. I liked my ability to sense when she was getting low.  

The mantra is, “If you like science and like to help people, you should be a physician.” I think it rings true for a lot of us. I also like the idea of pursuing a career that's about lifelong learning.  

You worked as a certified nursing assistant in a rural nursing home during COVID-19. What memories stand out to you from that time?

You’d have two nursing assistants down each hallway, same as normal — except now you had three times the acuity. The COVID hallway was isolated from the rest of the facility because it had to be. Throughout the whole pandemic, we had all but two residents get COVID.

I remember ushering families through the back door to say goodbye, and one resident who was having a difficult time seeing so many of her friends leave the facility for the funeral home. Having to wash and reuse your face shields because we didn’t get enough to come in that month and just making do.

There were a lot of difficult moments. Most of the time you couldn't really spend much time thinking about it because you had so much to do. But I fell in love with the connections that you make with people. I was discovering what it means to be somebody that a patient confides in. I just couldn’t see myself really doing anything else after that.

What drew you specifically to urology?

One of my first shadowing experiences in the hospital was with Dr. [Chris] Cooper. How lucky are the medical students that we have such a great mentor readily available? When you see somebody talk and see how they operate, and you're like, “I want to be like that” — that sparks the initial interest.  

Then I did my two-week elective in urology and worked with Dr. [Ryan] Steinberg, another close mentor. He was awesome and super welcoming. You could tell the OR staff was excited to work with him, and his patients saw him as family. I learned so much from him, often through trial and error, but he always took time to teach and make me feel like I belonged. That’s the type of environment that makes the early mornings and late nights not only tolerable but invigorating.

Urology is a mix of a lot of different issues and a wide range of diseases, all connected to a really intimate patient-provider experience. As I learned to help care for patients in the urology clinic, I realized that they come in and express concerns about issues they don’t tell anyone else about. It can be as “taboo” as erectile dysfunction or as concrete as cancer. Women talk about breast cancer; men don’t talk about prostate cancer. They can bottle it up. Expressing how powerful it is that they're being vulnerable allows a lot of people to open up.

Can you describe your research with Ryan Steinberg?

My main project was analyzing well water samples from patients’ households. We were curious how much mineral load a patient might be getting just from water alone, especially if you’re in a rural area. That could impact dietary counseling for patients with kidney stones. What we found was most patients don’t get a substantial amount of calcium from water, but some were getting up to 20% of the recommended daily allowance. It varied, and it depended on whether the person had water treatment, like filtration or a water softener.  

I presented that project at an international conference for the World Congress of Endourology and Uro-Technology. It was a fantastic experience. I got to listen to experts talk about new technologies — things that will probably be part of my practice. Being able to network and meet new people was really beneficial. I can’t thank Dr. Steinberg enough for enabling me to do that. It was one of the best experiences I had in medical school.

What were some of your activities in the Teaching Distinction Track? Why do you like teaching?

Sometimes in medical school, you might get a two-week urology elective before doing a full surgical rotation, so you have no idea how the operating room works. So, I would take students before that elective, show them how to scrub, what glove sizes they were, how to gown, and teach etiquette so they wouldn't have to go rescrub. The OR, for a lot of people, is a really scary place. Being able to make that slightly more comfortable is meaningful. I love the OR, so being able to share that and set people up for success was awesome.

I also helped teach medical students how to take a sexual history and do a genital exam. And part of that is saying, “Hey, this is kind of uncomfortable.” Even if you don’t need to have this skill for your job, it’s good practice being uncomfortable and working through that. Medicine is full of those moments.  

I've always liked accumulating knowledge and being useful with what I know. Breaking down and synthesizing complex information and witnessing that process unfold in another person is gratifying.

Urology is one of the specialties that matches early, so you knew where you were going before Match Day. What was that like?

I was pretty ecstatic when I found out. I did an away rotation at the Mayo Clinic last July and really loved the group. Growing up in northern Iowa, a lot of my friends and family sought care there, so it’s a privilege to return to and care for those familiar communities.

Matching early is nice. You get to beat the market for housing, and the stress goes away faster. I got to open that email in the comfort of my home.

You also have empathy for people who don’t know what's coming, who are nervous and scared. I'm looking forward to celebrating my friends. We put in a lot of work, so it's fun to see it come to fruition. I just happened to find out first.