Steven Schulberg (Class of 2008)

Steven Schulberg: I graduated from Schechter in 2008. Our class was the first to fill the High School from 9th to 12th grade, and it felt like a small community we got to develop. I still stay in touch with a number of people from my High School class and made some lifelong friendships. As for me, I knew I wanted to be a doctor from a very young age. My mother is a doctor; my grandmother was a doctor. After Schechter, I graduated from Binghamton University in 2012 and then I went to New York College of Osteopathic Medicine and graduated in 2016. I completed a five-year general surgical residency at NYU Brooklyn this past June. Now I’m doing a one-year advanced minimally invasive colorectal surgery fellowship at UT Houston and Houston Methodist Hospital. 

Colorectal is kind of an interesting field. I don’t think a lot of people think of it as a specialty. But colon cancer is unfortunately very prevalent, and there is a lot you can do to help people and prevent it from ruining lives and so it was one of those things that I really got into as I explored surgery a little more.


Q: How does your path right now align with what you expected to do professionally?

SS: I love surgery. We are doing really, really advanced robotic, minimally invasive surgery, a lot of which is aimed at the treatment of colon and rectal cancers. We also take care of patients with diverticulitis and inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. As I went through my surgical residency, I really enjoyed the follow-up and the treatment that you have with patients with colon cancer specifically. You serve as the quarterback for this team approach of treating colon cancer, and that was a big draw to the specialty. The interest I have is in following up with my patients for the long term. When you do an appendectomy, you see the patient one week later, and that’s it. Colon cancer, you can see them yearly for any number of years if you’ve done the right operation and they can keep coming back to you. The reason I chose [UT Houston] was because of the advanced robotic surgery that they’re doing. That’s really the forefront of surgical technology now and it’s going to be the future so I wanted to get some extra training in that. 

SS: I’m usually in the hospital at about 6:00 a.m. seeing the patients we’ve recently operated on and any new patients that might have come in from the emergency room. Usually we’re in the operating room starting at 7:30 a.m. until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. We have one dedicated clinic day every week where we see patients pre- and post-operatively. It’s a nice mix because some days we just do colonoscopies, some days we’re doing hemorrhoidectomies and other days we’re doing two or three major colon resections. It’s a nice variation, and it helps keep you fresh and excited. This year is very similar to what life will be like when I’m in an attending job. The way this year is set up, it’s more of a preceptorship, so it gives a good window into how life will be after training.

SS: It was terrible for lack of better words. We were completely surrounded by Covid and our normal day-to-day just ground to a standstill. We had to pivot from our normal work and find a way to help out as best we could. We stopped operating and all devoted our time to working in ICUs and taking care of patients with Covid. I did a total of six operations in three and a half months when they totally shut down elective surgery. The norm for three months is at least 70-80 cases. It was a very difficult time to be a physician too because we had to tell a lot of people no and we had to make some on-the-fly life and death decisions that we didn’t have a lot of information to make. One of the hardest parts was telling family members they couldn't be with their loved ones while they were in the hospital. Luckily, we've made great strides in the treatment of Covid and hopefully we won't ever have to go through a situation like that again.

SS: Delivering bad news is always challenging. Oftentimes, we find very advanced disease and cancer in patients and to have to present a bleak outlook is very difficult. One of the hardest things is learning how to do that tactfully and being able to support someone as they go through understanding and coping with a diagnosis. Knowing what to offer someone who has a bad diagnosis and knowing how to communicate that is the biggest challenge. The flip side is that you really can help someone if you’re able to catch something early; you can really affect the outcomes and help people’s lives. Even if there’s nothing you can do as a surgeon, you can help make things easier and help navigate the path to manage the disease down the line.