Get to know a Caregiver: Early Career in Medicine
June 04, 2020Get to know a Caregiver: Early Career in Medicine
.
Information
Anne Chiang, MD, PhD, Associate Professor; Chief Network Officer and Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Smilow Cancer Network, discusses her early life in medicine.
ID5272
To CiteDCA Citation Guide
- 00:00I was wondering if we could
- 00:04talk a little bit about you
- 00:08and where you grew up.
- 00:11I know you're from the Midwest
- 00:15originally. You're right. Yeah,
- 00:19I grew up.
- 00:22In Denver and but I grew up mostly
- 00:25in South Dakota, Rapid City,
- 00:28SD where Mount Rushmore is and that
- 00:31is a beautiful area of the country.
- 00:34And it is a relatively rural area,
- 00:37although I did not grow up on a farm.
- 00:42I grew up in that city or town
- 00:45and my father was a engineer,
- 00:48mechanical engineer who is a professor
- 00:51and Department headed that the local.
- 00:53College called South Dakota
- 00:55School of mines and technology.
- 00:57So I had three brothers and sisters and we.
- 01:02Had a great time growing up there.
- 01:06Lots of things to do outside the Black Hills,
- 01:10Skiing Lake, Sports, hiking, but really.
- 01:13Really, until like childhood I think yeah
- 01:16very safe place to grow
- 01:18up and focus on education.
- 01:21Well, tell us about what made
- 01:23you pursue a career in Medison.
- 01:25How did you like when?
- 01:26How old were you when you
- 01:28knew you wanted to be a
- 01:30doctor and why?
- 01:31Why did you choose that?
- 01:33I always wanted to be a
- 01:34teacher or librarian at first.
- 01:36I'm sort of glad it.
- 01:38While I'm still a teacher.
- 01:40I. I went to, um, you know,
- 01:44I actually did my PhD first,
- 01:47so I was a scientist before
- 01:49I was at a physician.
- 01:51I did my pH D at Harvard in.
- 01:54Molecular genetics and developmental
- 01:57biology with fruit flies order Saffola and.
- 02:02At the time it was a really
- 02:05interesting time in Boston.
- 02:07There are lots of ethical
- 02:10discussions around genetics,
- 02:11and it was just a really exciting.
- 02:14Provocative community and I really
- 02:17enjoyed interactions with my
- 02:19colleagues in the lab who were who
- 02:21had a medical background into work.
- 02:24and I like the kind of things
- 02:26that they were working on.
- 02:29The applied aspects of the basic
- 02:31biology that we were considering so.
- 02:34When when I finished,
- 02:36I decided to apply to medical school again,
- 02:39sort of.
- 02:40Because mainly I guess because I
- 02:42like the interactions with people
- 02:44and I really wanted to be able to
- 02:47help people a little more directly.
- 02:50Then then with dissecting for playing.
- 02:54But that was a fantastic come
- 02:58was really a fantastic.
- 03:00Oportuno community and and the
- 03:02time in my life and expose me
- 03:05to lots of really interesting
- 03:07questions that I think are really
- 03:10pertinent now and in Madison.
- 03:12And some of those I worked my
- 03:15my graduate thesis was on.
- 03:17Homeo box jeans and epigenetic regulation
- 03:21and you know that's that's becoming
- 03:24a really important aspect of cancer.
- 03:28Because how do you,
- 03:30through through time and development,
- 03:33of an embryo or cancer cells,
- 03:37control regulation of jeans,
- 03:39and?
- 03:40Right,
- 03:40it's route through the
- 03:41wrapping up the chromatin and
- 03:43thinking about Accessibility to
- 03:45chromatin. So yeah, OK, so you finish your pH
- 03:49D. Apply to medical school, yeah.
- 03:51And then I went to medical
- 03:54school and I loved it.
- 03:56I did a lot of research during medical
- 03:59school and in my training in the lab.
- 04:02Again, sort of sort of working
- 04:05on those translational projects,
- 04:06things that really matter to
- 04:08patients and their Karen.
- 04:10But trying to.
- 04:11Look at them from the real
- 04:14scientific aspect and and so I.
- 04:16I went to New York City where I
- 04:18went to medical school and my
- 04:20training and and ultimately ended
- 04:22up being an attending at Memorial
- 04:24Sloan Kettering and it was a
- 04:26really also again exciting time
- 04:28with lots of great colleagues.
- 04:30And do you remember, like
- 04:32a moment when you thought I
- 04:33want to be an oncologist?
- 04:35Or did you go into Medical School
- 04:38thinking about treating cancer patients?
- 04:40Or what was the evolution there? I
- 04:43think the evolution was, uhm.
- 04:45Partially. Emotional an partially uhm.
- 04:53Partially left and right
- 04:55both sides of the brain.
- 04:57I think that I had a really
- 05:00key experience on my Medison.
- 05:02Clerkship where I was taking care of
- 05:05cancer patients at that time there
- 05:08were a lot of HIV patients and they
- 05:10were getting malignancies in cancer
- 05:12and I think that I just developed a
- 05:16lot of really great relationships with
- 05:18those conditions and again seeing how
- 05:21how the doctors around me managed to.
- 05:24Create connections to patience at such
- 05:26a critical time in their lives and
- 05:29how much that made a difference in in
- 05:31the anxiety levels and understanding
- 05:33of the patients so that really,
- 05:35that really motivated me and then
- 05:38at the same .3 typically there
- 05:40was so much going on in cancer
- 05:42and molecular biology
- 05:43that I just. Really was was exciting.