Spine surgeon Arthur Jenkins, III, MD, has been in private practice since 2017 after being employed for more than a decade, and he still finds new opportunities to sharpen his skills.
Dr. Jenkins joined "Becker's Spine and Orthopedic Podcast" to discuss the advantages of continued learning and collaboration in the spine field.
Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full conversation here.
Question: Where do you see some of the best opportunities for continuing growth and development in the field, as well as in your practice?
Dr. Arthur Jenkins: From my perspective I've been just learning more about the different areas that I just didn't understand. I've learned more in the last five years about autonomic dysfunction and the spine and peripheral nervous system's impact upon patients who are hypermobile or had an injury that has made their body kink and pinch the autonomic nerves and cause severe problems that we can treat if we understand the biomechanics and then the neurobiology. It's not taught widely in neurosurgical training, so I had to learn all of this on my own. But as I learn it, I realize there is a whole population of patients out there who aren't or undertreated for these conditions.
I've learned to work with vascular surgeons, and I've actually added surgical treatments for thoracic outlet syndrome to my clinical practice, once again, something I was not taught during residency, but after working with others and coming up with a better way of doing it.
Another area is finding better ways to provide care to people through minimally invasive approaches … That's an opportunity to treat people once again who may have been told there's nothing more we can do for you, when that's actually not true.