Fritz Flemming 27Ox

Every day at the Johns Hopkins Hospital is different for Fritz. 

“I would meet with the attending neurosurgeon who I was following in his office at 6 am where I would get changed into scrubs and attend rounds. After rounds we would go back to his office and review images or other documents while the anesthesia team was preparing. When the room was ready I would follow the surgeon into the operating room where I would watch the surgeon do complex spinal procedures while also talking with the anesthesia team about the procedure. We, the surgeon and I, would hop rooms while the residents finished up surgery. On average the surgeon would do 2-3 surgeries before 12 am with some surgeries being as long as 4-5 hours and others being only an hour. After 12, we would usually attend clinic or do more surgeries. Depending on the severity of the day, I would get home either on the earlier side at 3pm or some nights at 9pm,” he describes. 

Though Fritz is an incoming first-year, he has taken advantage of the free courses Emory offers through Coursera in his freetime. 

“I took a class called "The Addicted Brain" taught by Dr. Michael Kuhar. It was really useful to see everything I learned about the brain and classes of drugs being used or referred to in clinic or by the anesthesia team. This class, although small, really helped me see the bigger picture present in medicine,” he reflects. 

Fritz took these courses because he loved medicine “ever since my mom decided to go back to school to become a nurse.” This neurosurgical based internship helped him discover a couple of areas he may want to go into in the future, however. His favorite part so far is following neurosurgeons on-call. 

“A lot of surgeries were put on the doctors call or emergency list even if they are late/international. One example was a patient had some type of accident that resulted in an internal decapitation with multiple disks being destroyed, which is really rare. The doctor and other fellowship groups got right to work and figured out a way to fix the patient with experimental surgical techniques, which was interesting to see. It was my favorite moment because I got to work with the doctor really late into the night and watch the time fly by.