Editor’s Note: To celebrate the Department of Anesthesiology’s House Officer Appreciation Week, February 24 – 28, we will highlight one House Officer from each class.
Immediately following his interview for the Department of Anesthesiology’s residency program, Marcus Arthur, M.D., saw a future for himself and his family.
“I told my wife, ‘I think I know where we’re going next year,’” Dr. Arthur said. “This program has a heavy emphasis on family, and many residents had children. I had never felt quite so embraced from that perspective.”
So Dr. Arthur, his wife Amber, and their children, Molly and Alex, eventually packed up and moved from Pennsylvania, where Dr. Arthur completed medical school at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University in 2016, and bought a house in Nebraska. It was important for the Arthurs to feel established and part of a community over the next four years. They frequented the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They had regular family adventures to the zoo, various museums, and play groups with the House Officers Association Alliance. Dr. Arthur enjoyed having a lawn to mow and a garden to tend to as a way to destress. They even rejoiced in the births of two more children, Grace and April. It was everything they had hoped for.
Dr. Arthur said he also got exactly what he asked for in terms of residency training, with ample access to transplant and heart cases with a heavy emphasis on echocardiography. Now a CA3 slated to graduate in summer of 2020, Dr. Arthur looked back at the start of his CA1 year as holding some of the most challenging moments. He remembered a particularly harrowing moment when he was emerging a patient for the first time under the watch of Sheila Ellis, M.D., vice chair for faculty development. She came into the operating room, sat in the back and didn’t say a word.
“She knew she could get me out of whatever I might get myself into, and she gave me a long leash which empowered me for the rest of residency,” Dr. Arthur said.
Upon graduation this summer, Dr. Arthur plans to move with his family to Missoula, Mont., where he signed a contract with an all-physician anesthesiology practice. He hopes to hone his skills and develop the same characteristics of his mentors at UNMC—Dr. Ellis, Jeff Songster, M.D., and Thomas Nicholas, M.D.
“There is something phenomenal about using your hands to care for someone,” Dr. Arthur said. “Our patients have to let me be their guardian angel for the duration of their surgery. They submit to my hands, and trust that I’m going to do whatever is best for them. There is a lot of power in that.”
House Officer Spotlight: CA3 Marcus Arthur, M.D.
