After practicing medicine for a few years after his residency, went back to school -- this time to get a master's degree in business administration.
In this MD<40 video, he explains why he thought it was important to invest in another degree so soon after residency, how he plans to use his business degree, and what advice he would give to others thinking of doing the same.
Following is a transcript of his remarks:
My name is Vilas Saldanha. I'm an orthopedic trauma surgeon and adult reconstruction surgeon with Texas Orthopedics, which is based in Austin, Texas.
I'm young. I have only been in practice about 6 years. What I'll tell you is that medicine is changing. The population is expanding and the need for healthcare is expanding. There is going to be several niche opportunities that you have to keep your eyes open for.
What advice I can give somebody that's thinking about this? Well... and this is purely opinion. But don't do it right after medical school or right after surgical training because this is going to be another stepping stone per se. You have to really want it and for me, at this point, it's an executive MBA at UT. Your grades don't matter. You want to be there because you want to be there. You want to learn because you actually want to use this information in your day to day.
For example, everything that I was reading before was either sports-related or was related to orthopedics surgery. But now I find myself picking up random books that I would never ever consider and opening up the Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal, and actually looking at these companies and saying, "Wow, that's really interesting how this happened," or that merger happened. It just adds another dimension. If you actually desire that and you want to pursue a higher level of education and you're interested in the synergies between medicine, business, and collaboration... maybe even an alternative career because that's another thing with this.
Why did I want to do a business degree? As an orthotrauma surgeon, the pathway to get there really is you do your 4 years of medical school and then you do 5 years of orthopedic surgery residency, then you do an additional year of orthopedic trauma just to get that high-energy type of surgical experience.
After that, I did 4 years in the United States Air Force; I deployed twice. In the military, it's really easy because it's just following orders, you know? "Go here. Treat this person," etc.
When I got out in 2016, I had a young baby. She was about 3 months old and then my wife wanted to go Texas, so we ended up in Austin. I really didn't know anything but how to operate on people and take care of patients. Then your financial bottom line is important. I had no experience reading financial statements, let alone what an overhead structure really was.
That first practice, it didn't really work out for me. Statistically, that's very common, especially in my line of work where people switch practices within 2 years, and mine was within 1 year. It was at that point it was actually pivotal for me, really, where I said, "Okay, I'm neck-deep in surgery and I'm..." kind of one facet to me. I didn't really know basic things about business and I wanted to learn something, so that was the impetus for that.
How do I balance this? Well, it's hard. Honestly, it's very hard because orthotrauma surgery is pretty intense. You don't know what you're going to get from day to day and it requires a significant amount of concentration, both a mental and physical exhaustion. To have to switch gears and then do financial statement analysis for accounting takes... it's hard.
What I do is every Sunday I plan my week out and I give myself 90-minute blocks to study. I assume that it's going to take me about 20 to 25 hours/week of studying, and you just fit it in when you can. Additionally, I try doing it during my day between cases, read a little bit here or there, but my retention really wasn't good. When you actually have a longer period of time, it helped me significantly with retention.
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