Becker's recently connected with Andrew Boxer, MD, a physician with Woodland Park-based Gastroenterology Associates of New Jersey, to learn why he chose this speciality and hear his perspective on what makes New Jersey a great place to practice.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What made you choose gastroenterology as your specialty?
Dr. Andrew Boxer: Gastroenterology for me was not an obvious pick at the beginning. As I was going through medical school, it became evident by the end of the [third] year that it was absolutely what I wanted to do. I would go through each specialty and love something about it. I'd rotate through surgery and it was fascinating to go in, see something wrong and fix it … then I'd go into family medicine and see these relationships that doctors would have with their patients and families literally for decades … then I'd go and be into a trauma rotation and see something in the middle of the night that's life saving. I fell into gastroenterology and it was kind of evident that it had everything. It had long relationships, screening and cancer prevention, technology, semi-surgical procedures. The thing for me that clinched it is I have the personality of a gastroenterologist. They're usually kind of fun, upbeat, it was a natural fit. There's no question.
Q: As a gastroenterologist, how do you go about building doctor-patient relationships?
AB: I treat people like I want to be treated, how I want my family to be treated. I always say I give patients as much time as they need — some people need five minutes, some people need an hour. Whatever they need, we're here for. I explain things on as basic of a level as I can. I really try to embody patient-centered medicine. As a doctor, I don't see myself as someone who goes and tells a patient what to do. I see myself more as an educator. I let patients know about disease processes, options out there for treatment and diagnosis. I educate them on their level and help them to choose what course would work well for them. The same disease for different patients might be treated differently and still have a great outcome. When the patient chooses how they want to be treated and is involved in the process, the outcomes are really far superior.
Q: What is it like practicing as a gastroenterologist in New Jersey when you're surrounded by medical hotspots like New York City and Philadelphia?
AB: I did residency at [New York City-based] Mount Sinai and my fellowship at NYU, and I have very close friends that stayed there. It's very nice to be in Jersey and have access to that when we need it. There's no question that there's times that we'll encounter something weird that you really want a true national, world expert to weigh in. It's great to have the ability to call on people that trained you to give advice. It's great to be able to say to a patient that we have a contact over there and be able to send a patient to go see them. But you don't have to go to New York or Philadelphia for everything. There's high quality care here. We have great hospitals, the same equipment, a lot of people in different specialties who have trained in those places too. For the normal, everyday stuff, Jersey's great. We have all the technology brought over the river here. When we need specialized help, which isn't terribly often, it's right there.
Q: What role has mentorship played in your career in gastroenterology?
AB: One thing that I do fairly regularly and is certainly one of the highlights of my day is I'm on staff as one of the faculty over at [Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center] at the medical school. I teach med students anywhere from their first year to their fourth year, and occasionally I'll teach post-graduates. They kind of spend days and weeks with me.
I've had a lot of mentors over the years as a student, resident, fellow that I keep in touch with today. As I'm doing procedures and seeing patients, I still hear their voice in my head and follow what they say. I try to emulate that. I try to teach students first and foremost how to be a good doctor — how to listen, how to take care of patients, how to be a good person — and then teach them medicine on top of that. I know it sounds crazy, but it's probably harder to teach them how to be a good person and doctor, and then once you get some basic knowledge of medicine it sort of all falls into place.
Q: What advice would you give for someone who's in medical school and interested in gastroenterology?
AB: I don't know what else I would do, even outside of medicine. Gastroenterology has it all — life long relationships, life threatening emergencies, whole body care. The big thing is that medicine is going to change dramatically over the next five, 10, 20 years… I don't think we can even perceive how medicine is going to change. Technology is really exploding at an exponential rate and we don't even know how that's going to affect medicine and gastroenterology. I think there's going to be a lot of changes out there. Ultimately, as all this happens, one thing that I'm seeing in all these specialties, in particular gastroenterology and patient-focused specialties, is that patients are going to have more and more access to their records, their results, to the provider and things are going to be demanded in quick rates. One big change is there's going to be a lot of personalized medicine, a lot of patient control over their data, tests and responses. They're going to be able to chat with providers on a 24-hour basis. Medicine is already an all encompassing lifestyle, and it's going to become even more than that. Make sure that this is really something that you like because I think it's really going to embody a lot of time. People talk about burnout, and if you don't like what you're doing, that makes things way worse.