Hello, I’m Dr. Jeffrey Gittins. I went into medicine really just to help people. It’s such a pleasure these days when, after becoming an orthopedic surgeon, being able to sit in front of somebody to counsel them, then do the surgery for them and help them directly. It’s a sheer pleasure.
I did my residency here in Columbus, Ohio, at what used to be Doctors Hospital. I went on to do my fellowships in California. I did a sports medicine fellowship at the Southern California Orthopedic Institute, and then I did a trauma fellowship there as well. I also did an adult foot and ankle reconstruction fellowship in Oakland, California, with Roger Mann.
When it comes to sports medicine, it’s just a sheer pleasure to spend time with athletes, as well as older athletes. Unfortunately, sometimes they get hurt, and it’s nice to commiserate with them and understand where they’re coming from from an athletic standpoint.
It’s also nice to be able to help them get back on the road to recovery, whether or not they require surgery, or just helping them from a nonsurgical standpoint to get them back on the road to recovery to play their sport again.
When it comes to adult foot and ankle reconstruction, it was an area for our practice that we were weak in. We didn’t have anybody with subspecialties in that area. And so, in my sports medicine fellowship, I was able to sub-specialize in ankle and foot arthroscopy, and then I developed that into foot and ankle reconstruction.
I like to counsel people who want to go into medical school and then into physician’s assistant school. I constantly tell them that you have to pick something that you will want to roll out of bed every day for, getting up to do it at 5:00 in the morning or even answering that phone call at 3:00 in the morning.
So, it’s a pleasure. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it, but it’s something I look forward to doing every day.
What inspires me the most is to be better. If you’re not challenging yourself, you tend to become sedate. And so, I look forward to challenging myself every day to improve my practice.
