My name is Megan Applewhite. I am an endocrine surgeon, which effectively means that I operate on the glands, including the thyroid gland, the parathyroid glands, the adrenal glands. I also take out lymph nodes in the neck if they should be involved with cancer. So I operate on people who have surgical endocrinopathies, as they say, so troubles with their thyroid or parathyroids or adrenals that would require surgery.

I chose to become a physician because I felt like I have ease with communication with people who don't have a familiarity with the medical language or the medical jargon. And I really do love communicating with people about their medical problems and putting it into phrases, into explanations, into a description that they understand and that makes sense to them with their bodies and their context.

I chose UChicago Medicine because I really love taking care of the patient population that the University of Chicago serves. I have all of the resources that are available to me of a major academic center, and I have a community of patients who depend on us and who really do deserve the best care. And so it's a pleasure and it's a tremendous responsibility to deliver that care to them and one that I think is really important that I don't take for granted.

My philosophy of care is that patients know themselves best. And I think that aa anxiety provoking as surgery can be, or the prospect of having a surgery or even having a new diagnosis, for as scary as that can be, my philosophy is that if you can establish a good trusting relationship with your doctor or with your nurse or with your care team that that can, in fact, be a positive experience and one in which you build more trust in the medical system, more trust in your team. And you can be better off for it, quality of life, and ideally quantity of life if we're able to afford that.

When patients come into the office, they frequently come in with different levels of understanding of their specific diagnosis options for care, alternatives that may not be surgery related. And I think that it's my responsibility to meet patients where they are and when they come into the office and understand what they know about their diagnosis and meet them there and then describe surgery as I think that it may help them specifically with their situation.

So two patients with thyroid problems may have very different treatment plans and very different understanding of what options there are. And so I think that it's my job to just be very upfront with them and very clear with them and compassionate with them, recognizing that it's a very anxiety provoking thing to be sitting in the office of a surgeon, and I like to make it as comfortable as I can and to be as trustworthy as possible so that we can help patients do the best they can.