Before there were hospitals, prescriptions, or medicine as a science, it was a calling, a promise to heal, to question, and to understand the human body.

Every discovery began with curiosity, and every breakthrough began with someone asking, why?

From ancient remedies to artificial intelligence, this is where science meets compassion.

Welcome to the Aesculapian Society.

Today, I'm honored to welcome Dr. Donald Whiting, a distinguished neurosurgeon who serves as System Chair of the AHN Neuroscience Institute and Department of Neurosurgery.

Dr. Whiting is nationally recognized for his expertise in deep brain stimulation, particularly in treating Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders.

We're excited to hear about his path into medicine, his experiences in neurosurgery, and his perspective on the future of patient care.

Welcome, Dr. Whiting. Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you, Dhruv. It's a pleasure.

So, let's move on to your personal motivation and background.

What inspired you to become a doctor?

My family was in the appliance business.

We had appliance stores, and I was not very good at selling appliances.

But I was good at science, and then I started in school getting more and more interested in it.

And in college, my psychology major involved a lot of rat and cat animal brain surgery.

So, I started liking doing that, understanding the brain, and then that's what drove me to go into neurosurgery.

Okay.

So, I read an article about you online, and it said that your mother was a nurse.

How important was parental guidance in you becoming a doctor?

My mother was a nurse, and she really did have a strong influence in me, particularly now that I am a doctor, understanding the role of the nurse in healthcare and how we're really one big team.

So, it really makes me much more compassionate and understanding of everybody else's role that makes my job successful.

Okay.

So, how did your friends and family react when you told them you wanted to be a doctor, especially your mother?

Well, as I told you, I was not good at selling appliances.

My dad was ecstatic that I was not going to be in the family business.

Yes.

But they were also very proud of me.

Okay.

So, what was your high school life like relating to medicine?

I was a little nerdy in sports, but also studied a lot.

I had, you know, advanced classes and different things in high school.

And it was really, it was a good well-rounded experience for me.

Did you do any volunteer extracurriculars to help boost your application?

Yes.

I worked at the Easter Seals Society in the summers as an aide and as an assistant during high school most of the time.

Okay.

So, on a fun note, what would you be doing right now if you hadn't chosen medicine?

So, I really, when I was growing up, I liked the idea of a milkman because they get up early, get done by noon, and then have the rest of the day.

So, thinking about that.

But seriously, I probably would have been in the family business selling appliances.

Okay.

So, thanks for your background.

So, moving on to the path to becoming a doctor.

What was your process to becoming a neurosurgeon starting all the way from high school and starting to practice?

So, not being from a family that was already in medicine, I didn't really know what it took, the steps to do it, besides working hard in school.

So, for me, it was learning a lot about the different things you need to do to boost your application and to apply to the right places and things like that.

So, that in college was helpful.

And then I actually went to graduate school and got a master's so I could learn more about the process before going to medical school.

So, you went to Thomas Jefferson University, right?

For medical school, yes.

For medical school.

So, what do you do after, like, medical school?

Do you go to residency?

Yes.

So, typically, after medical school, you end up what's called matching into a residency.

So, the way that works is you apply to different residency programs in the specialty that you're interested in, whether it's primary care, family medicine, emergency medicine, or neurosurgery, or any of them.

And then you get interviews.

And when you interview, then you make a list, and the places you interview make a list, and it's called the match.

So, we'll rank 1 to 30, the people we interviewed that we want to have come here.

And we pick 3 a year.

The student will rank all of the places they interviewed in the order they want to go.

And then there's a big computer somewhere that matches up their highest choice with our highest choice.

And that's what's called the match.

So, it's a big surprise, usually, in March.

On a Friday, it's called Match Day.

We get an envelope that says we're going to spend the next 3 to 7 years, and that's where you go after that.

So, you spent 7 years in residency, right?

So, when I did, it was 6.

Oh.

It moved to seven about 10 years ago.

So, long-term, does going to a prestigious medical school like Harvard or Yale matter to a non-elite university?

So, I went to a college called Grinnell, which is 1,200 people in Iowa, which then got me into medical school with Thomas Jefferson.

I think, in the end, where you go depends on what you learn and how you do.

The name matters a little bit, but it's mostly how you individually perform.

So, it doesn't matter as much as people make it out to be.

Right.

Because there's different skill sets along the way.

In medical school, in high school, college, and medical school, it's really about doing the best you individually can.

But when you pick people to be in our residency programs, it's more about teamwork.

So, some people are really good individual workers, but not necessarily good team workers.

So, really, where people go for school through those years matters this much because it shows that they're smart, but it doesn't really tell us the whole story.

So, on one of the parts of the application, you have to do the MCAT, right?

How did you prepare for it?

So, I did all the things everybody does.

I got the exam books to practice from.

I took the courses.

I did all the things to get the best score I could get.

So, for you, what was harder, passing medical school itself or getting accepted?

Into medical school, getting accepted.

So, what made getting accepted harder?

I didn't come from a medical family.

My family was in sales.

So, there's a lot of nuances you learn from a medical family about how to be prepared with your application and everything else.

All the check marks that they look for in medical school.

So, that's what made it hard for me.

I didn't have the background going into it.

Looking back, is there anything you wish you had done differently in your pre-med years?

No.

I had a great time and I learned a lot and made a lot of good friends.

And in the end, life's a journey.

So, you might as well enjoy that.

It's not about the end result so much as the ride.

So, you said you had friends before.

How did you manage stress and maintain a social life during medical school?

Well, the one thing that I've learned over the years is that if you're so focused on one thing, you lose balance in life.

So, keeping balance between social and family and work and exercise is what makes you very successful.

So, where I went to medical school, it was very much built around having balance in life.

So, they fostered that to help make you a better student.

So, this time when you went to medical school, you were healthy?

Oh, yes.

Okay.

Yeah, we had flag football teams.

We had basketball leagues.

We did all the physical, you know, things as a group for team building.

We had, you know, study groups.

We had all the things to keep it balanced.

Okay.

So, when you were studying, was AI ever incorporated into medicine?

Those two letters weren't part of my training when I was in school because that was in the mid-80s.

Oh, okay.

You say that like I'm 400 years old.

But...

Oh, I'm sorry.

But no, I mean, that just wasn't part of what we had back then.

No, I'm sorry.

No, I'm joking.

Thank you.

And so, move on to the day-to-day life of your neurosurgeon.

So, what do you actually do normally for every day?

You know, my wife asks me that every day, but I'm kidding.

So, usually get up early, come in, make rounds on the patients that we've taken care of, either operated on or whatever, early in the morning to get ready for surgery, which usually starts around 645.

Or clinic, which usually starts around 730, where we see patients.

And then do that through the day.

And at the end of the day, round on the patients we've taken care of, check on everybody.

And throughout the day, during the day, teach the residents and the medical students that are with us along the way.

So, there's teaching.

There's taking care of the patients.

There's doing the business of filling out the paperwork and everything.

Okay.

So, can you walk me through, like, a common case you take on during or about surgery?

Sure.

I do a couple of things specifically.

One is deep brain stimulator surgery.

So, what deep brain stimulator surgery is, is minimally invasive brain surgery.

Where we make a small little opening in the skull and put an electrode that's about two millimeters in diameter deep into the brain to a relay center that helps control symptoms that are out of control.

So, specifically, for example, Parkinson's disease is a disruption of different circuits in the brain that control the smoothness of movements.

It makes tremor and it makes rigidity.

That's because the circuits are out of sync.

There's a relay center where those circuits interplay to keep that synchrony.

We put that electrode into that relay center and adjust the electricity to re-synchronize the circuitry, almost like you adjust the thermostat in your house to get the right temperature from your furnace.

We can do that with the electrodes.

To get that electrode into the right area, we have to be within one millimeter of accuracy where we put it.

It's a very narrow area we're going for.

So, we have MRIs and CAT scans that we take the data and put it into a computer.

The computer then gives us the information we need and it's almost like GPS for the brain.

That gives us a 3D reconstruction of the brain and we can get in there right where we want to be.

Then we do it awake.

The surgery is awake so we can test it and see the improvement of the motor function right away and we know we're in the right spot.

Then we just put a little plastic cap that locks that down.

Close up the incisions and they go to the recovery room and then get CAT scan, go home the next day and we bring them back a week later to hook that electrode up to a little battery pack like a pacemaker on the collarbone.

Then that has about 70,000 different settings we can set to adjust the electrical activity around that to give us the different adjustments we need to realign that circuitry.

So, it's very precise minimally invasive surgery to get back the control of somebody's motor function when they lost it with the disease.

Okay.

So, I'm sure like there sometimes are complications.

So, how do you deal with complications or worst case losing a patient?

That's a very good question.

I think, you know, with anything we do to try to help function, there's always some risk.

We talk to the patients ahead of time when we're planning the surgery about what the risks are versus the benefits.

And generally, we like to have a significant difference between benefit being the highest number, risk being as low as possible.

Given that, when we do have some situations occasionally where there are complications, you know, we work to improve that, help them get through that, help them work with them and their family to get them back to the best function we can afterwards.

Okay.

So, by the contrast from above, what's the most rewarding moment you've had in your career?

The most rewarding moments are giving people the control of their life back.

So, for example, there's a story not too long ago about a 17- or 18-year-old girl who had Tourette's syndrome.

So, since the age of 2, she was not able to be out in public school systems or in activities because the tics, the abnormal reactions that happen spontaneously like tremors and twitches and things kept her from being able to be in a classroom.

We did the surgery and she got essentially rid of all of those symptoms and ended up getting engaged, getting married, taking classes in a classroom, sitting in the front row and doing presentations, which her whole life she hadn't been able to do and now she could.

Okay.

So, during these surgeries, is AI and robotics currently integrated into them?

So, AI robotics is part of spine surgery, part of brain surgery in some situations.

So, yes, it is getting integrated into it.

And, in fact, what we do with brain surgery, as I mentioned, with realigning some of the circuits with the electrodes,

big data analysis, AI and miniaturization of computers is allowing us to start developing closed-loop systems, which means we don't have to do any adjustments.

It senses it in the brain, the computer analyzes it, and then it sends a signal to avert or fix that behavior, all from a device that's implanted on the skull and into the brain.

So, that's just the beginning of the advancement.

The future is very bright for this kind of thing.

Okay.

And, again, another fun question.

What's something about being a neurosurgeon that would surprise most people in their daily life?

I think, you know, being a brain surgeon isn't rocket science, as they say.

Anyway, it's really a very – it's a great job.

It's a fun job.

And when you're well-trained, you know, it's a job that, like I said, is very rewarding.

But I think people have the idea that the brain is very complex and how would you be able to figure all that out?

It's very much understandable and very much controllable with the right training and experience.

Okay.

So, that actually leads right into the next topic, qualities and skills.

So, just like you said, it isn't rocket science.

The quote, this isn't brain surgery.

It's also sometimes said.

With you actively practicing brain surgery, how much of it is academics and how much is communication skills?

Wow.

That's a very deep and smart question.

You have to be very well-versed in the anatomy and physiology because, you know, as they say, it's very expensive real estate in the brain.

There's no room for error with not knowing your anatomy.

So, academics is very important, understanding all of that.

But also, you know, your physical dexterity, your skill set is very important.

But communication is so important because it's not you alone.

It's your team.

So, there's anesthesia.

There's the circulating nurse.

There's the scrub nurse.

There's people from the device company.

There's the residents and the students.

And everybody has to really work in a very coordinated dance type way.

And you can't really be out of sync.

And then, as you mentioned, when something goes awry, you can't panic about it.

Everybody has to come together in an organized way.

And that's all about communication.

Okay.

So, what qualities do you think are useful for being a neurosurgeon?

Certainly, honesty and integrity are number one.

Being intelligent.

But also, as you mentioned, being able to communicate.

Being able to be, being able to take charge of a situation calmly and authoritatively.

But get the team to work with you.

So, collaboration is very important, I think.

So, when talking about surgery, you're like the boss, essentially?

We would call the captain of the ship.

Okay.

And finally, do you think future doctors will have AI into their curriculum?

I think AI is going to be a very integral part of all of medical education and treatment.

And, in fact, now, just using AI to source information that would have taken hours or days to do not too long ago.

And actually, you know, put together a meaningful action plan.

AI is really revolutionizing that and making people that were average at finding information very, very good at it.

So, I think it's really helping to bring things together to help people work on solutions rather than spending all their time working on getting the information.

Okay.

Well, thank you.

And let's move on to your career and lifestyle.

So, what percent of being a doctor is about money versus helping people, would you personally say?

That's a really good question.

It depends.

I mean, it really should be about helping people because there's better ways to make lots of money.

And I think if you go into it to make money, you're picking the wrong route and you're not going to be happy with your career.

You know, working on Wall Street, being in banking, being in investing, things like that, definitely build around making money.

Not about really a whole lot of other things, but making money.

In medicine, the hours, the commitment, the personal investment really isn't worth any amount of money if you're not doing it to help people.

Plus, the reward, in the end, isn't the money.

It really is the feeling you get for helping people get their lives back or saving their lives or doing things that integrally help their lives.

So, I don't think people that are in medicine for the right reason are in it for the money.

Okay.

So, what would you say are the biggest benefits of this career?

Would you say it's like watching people get their motor skills back?

So, the biggest benefit of being in medicine is you go to work and feel good about the fact that just going to work is going to make a difference in the world.

And, too, it's a respected career.

People, you know, respect you.

It does give you a reliable income no matter what specialty you're in.

And it helps you really then, in other ways, help the community because you're respected as a volunteer or a board member or things like that because of your knowledge.

So, I think it's a good career for stability, for happiness and reward and for helping the world.

So, if someone has a passion for medicine but they go to school and they get into debt, would you still say it's a good idea for them to go into it?

So, you mean they get into school and then get in debt going to school?

Yes.

I think that's the nature of the business at this point is it does – it's expensive to go to medical school.

But in the end, the government had some plans to help forgive debt over the years for certain specialties, which is really good.

But in the end, the career will give you enough income to pay that debt off.

I think if you quit with the debt without getting the career, you're kind of committed to finding that career that's going to pay that debt off, which may or may not be as lucrative to do that.

So, I think getting a debt is part of the nature of it and sort of part of the end game.

I was – frankly, I was about 50 when I paid off all my debts from school.

So, where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Still working, retiring?

Hopefully alive.

But I've been doing this now – I've been in neurosurgery since 1991 with six years before that in residency.

So, probably another four or five years, I will retire.

I have seven grandkids right now that I love spending time with and, you know, hopefully spend more time with them.

Probably always be a little bit connected to this.

I work with two of my sons in our department, and I have a really great group of young neurosurgeons that I hope to follow their careers and be helpful with them too.

So, moving on to family and personal life, how's the work-life balance in neurosurgery?

It's a career known for being especially demanding.

So, work-life balance is variable over the years.

When you're in your residency, the first couple of years of residency are pretty intense because you're getting all the basic knowledge there, patient care management, the ICU management, things like that.

So, it's a time commitment.

And with all residencies, there's an 80-hour work week.

So, you can't work more than 80 hours in a week, but also then there's study time and things like that.

So, the first couple of years, it's a little bit harder to have a great balance.

But the last five years, it's very balanced as far as work time and free time and other things that you do.

And, in fact, a lot of our residents have a regular physical fitness regime that they do to stay physically fit.

They do a lot of outside activities together and apart, and a lot of them have families.

Once out of residency, again, the first couple of years, while you're building your name, building your practice, you're working pretty hard.

You have debt that you want to pay off, so you're working pretty hard.

Once you start having a family, usually you can work it out where you do have the opportunity to have work-life balance.

That's where it becomes a personal choice.

You have to decide you want to keep the balance between work and family, physical health and mental health and spiritual health.

So, that's something that we train our residents to keep an eye on because if you don't pay attention to that, you can get down the rabbit hole of working too much.

But there is the opportunity to have good balance.

So, what are your hours?

Like, what time do you come in and then leave?

So, now I work probably about 10 hours to 11 hours a day.

I don't work so much on the weekends because I'm head of the department.

Most of my people that are, my doctors that are earlier in their career, they probably work about, maybe about 60 hours a week and then weekends.

And then they're on call.

So, sometimes when you're on call, you're not necessarily working, but you have to take phone calls at night and things like that.

So, yeah, referencing the same article I cited before, both of your sons are neurosurgeons.

And now all three of you guys work together at AHN's Neuroscience Institute.

What was it like the moment you found out they followed you?

So, before that, when they went to college, I said, you guys have, and my daughter as well, who isn't a neurosurgeon, said, you have to pick the career that makes you happiest.

Because no matter what you do, you can't go to work and hate it because you're going to take that home after work and it's not going to be a good life.

So, pick whatever you want to do.

And for a while, I wasn't sure what, they weren't sure what they wanted to do.

And then it turned out they ended up going to medical school and then it turned out they ended up going to neurosurgery.

So, it was, I was very proud because that's a good career.

Happy because during their childhood, I didn't make it seem like a horrible life or they wouldn't have done it.

And then also it's a responsibility because when you work with them, when you're working with your family, it's, it's, everybody has to elevate the ships.

So, you can't have, I can't be bad at my job, they can't be bad at their job because we're all connected.

But it's similar with all the other doctors in my department.

They're all, we're all one big family.

So, what's it like working alongside your own kids versus unrelated colleagues?

So, at work, I really try to keep it the same with everybody.

And I think I have a really good relationship with all of our doctors.

At home, when we have family events, my wife made a rule that we can only talk about work for five minutes at any family event.

Because if not, it becomes overwhelming to the rest of the family and it's not fair.

So, we keep family, family, work, work.

And it's, I try, I have a good relationship with all our doctors.

Okay.

So, your son, Alexander, said that you never missed a soccer practice.

How did you actually manage that kind of balance with having this career?

Volitional effort to be present during their childhood.

So, I was very busy at the time operating and doing things like that.

But I made my schedule such that I was there when they had events and I was there when they were growing up.

And the final question.

What piece of advice do you wish you had heard when you were an early kid or teen?

I think the best, I had a lot of good mentors throughout.

So, I got a lot of different advice along the way that was all good.

I think everything worked out.

And everything, every right turn and wrong turn happened for a reason that I learned from it.

So, I think all the advice I got was good.

Sometimes not necessarily timely.

But I don't know that I would have done anything differently.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed.

I'm currently thinking of becoming either a neurosurgeon or a cardiothoracic surgeon.

Leaning more toward the neurosurgeon side.

And I really appreciate all of the information you've provided me.

Thank you, Dhruv.

And I can tell you neurosurgery is way more fun than cardiothoracic surgery.

So, pick us.

Okay.

So, thank you very much.

Yep.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you.