Colin I. Bethel This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. The Nassau Guardian - www.thenassauguardian.com

   www.thenassauguardian.com/soci - [Cached]

   Published on: 10/27/2006   Last Visited: 10/27/2006

   Thank goodness Colin A. I. Bethel, MD, likes to travel. Born in The Bahamas, the chief of pediatric surgery at UMDNJ-University Hospital (UH) and assistant professor of surgery at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) has spent many a vacation roughing it through parts of southeast Asia, including Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
   
   Burma is next on his list. "I grew up travelling," he says. It's what he does with his free time and his family still lives in the Caribbean, a reason for flying south. Yet closer to his professional home here at UMDNJ in Newark, this ease regarding travel takes on a whole different level of meaning when it comes to sick children or babies with birth defects. Bethel and his NJMS team , Nishith Bhattachary-ya, MD, and Bienvenido Jongco, MD , are so in demand in northern New Jersey that on any given day, they might find themselves operating in University Hospital, St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson, St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, or at Newark's Beth Israel Medical Center.
   ...
   "There is a real shortage of pediatric surgeons so it's very, very busy clinically," Bethel explains. His group handles about 1,500 cases a year, 700 at UH alone, and a total which is "probably 50 percent of all the pediatric surgery in the state of New Jersey," he estimates. Pediatric surgeons spend up to 10 extra years in medical training and are rare. According to Bethel, there are only about 25 new ones who complete their educations annually. Yet, "This was the only medical specialty for me. There is nothing else that would have made me go through the five years of general surgical residency, three years of research, and then fellowships."
   
   Bethel graduated from Harvard University in 1983, cum laude and in three years, with a degree in chemistry. He almost went into engineering. "I never thought of medicine until the very last minute. Like many Caribbean parents, my family considered education so important and really emphasized education, education, education." He completed medical school at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and then went on to Yale University, the University of California at San Francisco as well as Ohio State University's Children's Hospital. One of his post-doctoral fellowships was spent at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Depart-ment of Biomedical Research, a federal research facility.
   
   In fact, what attracted Bethel to pediatric surgery were the "neonates and premature infants , the tiny, tiny babies , and intensely delicate surgical procedures. Because the babies are so small, getting to the area that needs to be operated on is pretty quick," he explains. "Once you are there, it is an intense experience. Quick, short but so intense because it requires a lot of focus on tiny details."
   
   For Bethel, another draw has always been his patients' general health status. "For the most part, we are dealing with a healthy little person with just one organ system that needs to be fixed." In general he doesn't have to worry about factors such as an individual's smoking habits, alcohol consumption, blood pressure, heart disease or diabetes, conditions that could loom large before any adult surgery. "These babies bounce back really fast."
   
   While Bethel's work is always technically challenging and he thrives on the intensity in that operating room, holding the power to give kids a future, is clearly rewarding. He smiles easily just thinking about this patient.
   
   The very first pediatric surgeon to practice out of UH, Bethel started in July 1997, when surgical coverage for pediatric cases was "scattered and provided by outside specialists on an as-needed, or emergency, basis." Arriving here in Newark, straight out of his last training fellowship in Columbus, Ohio's Children's Hospital, he says, "I grabbed the opportunity to lead a program and to be in the New York area."
   
   A member of the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School Resident Education Committee, Bethel also enjoys his role as a teacher. "I love working with the medical students and using the Socratic method. Nowadays, med students don't always like this approach but I'm not asking questions around the room , the kind they may not be able to answer , to be mean or to intimidate them." For Bethel, it's about learning the material and remembering the answer the next time.
   
   His dream is to have a hospital in northern New Jersey devoted to children's care. "The state really needs two or three of them. Traveling to all these other hospitals can be a problem." Not only is Bethel moving from day to day but other pediatric experts aren't in one centralized place either.