Dr. Arcand’s Path to Orthopedic Surgery, M.D.

Dr. Nicole Arcand, an orthopedic surgeon, knew that she wanted to be a doctor from the time she was five years old. She looked up to both her father, who was a doctor, and her older brothers, who all aspired to become doctors, so naturally, she wanted to be just like them. While she did have momentary thoughts of other possible career choices, such as engineering based on her love for both math and science, she consistently circled back to medicine.

During her high school years, Dr. Arcand was fortunate enough to gain an even greater exposure to medicine by volunteering at Kent Hospital. She soon obtained a job at the hospital working as an orderly. In this position, Dr. Arcand worked in the operating room, helping the orthopedic department get both their equipment and patients ready for surgery. While doing this, both the doctors and the nurses working in this department took Dr. Arcand under their wings, allowing her to develop a great feeling about orthopedics as a whole.

After high school, Dr. Arcand attended Providence College, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree before attending medical school at Brown University. Despite having previous exposure to orthopedic surgery, she wanted to keep an open mind during her years in medical school. However, after completing her internship in general surgery, she returned to orthopedic surgery for her residency. This was followed by a one-year trauma fellowship, and finally one-year foot and ankle fellowship.

Now that Dr. Arcand has been a practicing orthopedic surgeon for many years, her typical week consists of 2 to 3 days in the office and 1 to 2 days in the operating room.  When in the office, she typically sees patients from 8 am to 5 pm. When in the operating room, her day typically starts around 7:30 am and can finish at 3 in the afternoon or 8 to 10 at night. While she is able to dictate her hours, she finds that as a surgeon, it is important to practice your trade, which often can result in working longer hours.

In addition to her days in the office and operating room, Dr. Arcand also spends some days on call. Because she is one of seven orthopedic surgeons at the hospital, she tends to be on call one day a week, sometimes having a skip week. She is also on call one in every seven weekends.

Over the time she has spent working as an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Arcand has developed a love for certain aspects of her job. One part of her job that she truly loves is interacting with her patients. Throughout her time working with each patient, she is able to improve their quality of life. She finds this to be the most rewarding part of her job, as she loves getting to see them return to the things they love without the pain they were previously experiencing. One very memorable example of this was when she worked with an extreme athlete. This patient was not only a great guy, but also completed some very impressive races.

However, in doing these multiple day races, he ended up tearing his lateral tendons on the outside of his foot. Dr. Arcand had to perform a large surgery to reconstruct these tendons. Because this patient was so motivated, he was able to begin racing again only four months after his surgery. During this race, he won! Dr. Arcand loved getting to be a part of his journey, and found it so rewarding to see it through to the end.

Although there are many things she loves about her job, there is one aspect that she doesn’t necessarily love. When working in medicine, there is a lot of paperwork involved. Dr. Arcand takes in-depth notes on every patient, as it is needed for insurance companies as well as other doctors that have the same patients. Oftentimes, paperwork such as these notes can take around 2 to 3 hours to complete at the end of every day. She finds that this paperwork really detracts from the job itself.

After going through this process herself, Dr. Arcand knows that the biggest reason people steer away from medicine is the amount of schooling you have to complete before becoming a practicing physician. One thing she would tell high schoolers that are interested in this field is that you shouldn’t dismiss it because you are afraid of the commitment it takes to accomplish the end goal. Although it can get overwhelming very quickly, if you really want it, you have to go for it! By living in the moment, you will get there soon enough.

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Kelly Roth’s Path to Physician Assistant