{"id":275,"date":"2010-09-16T11:12:59","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T01:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=275"},"modified":"2010-09-16T11:35:07","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T01:35:07","slug":"face-to-face-a-surgeon%e2%80%99s-inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=275","title":{"rendered":"Face to Face: A surgeon\u2019s inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Ilana<\/a>There\u2019s something almost savant-like about world renowned veterinary surgeon Jeff Mayo. He has a compulsion to learn how everything works \u2013 and the quiet confidence that he can master it if he sets his mind to it. Even if that means repeating the same task over and over until he achieves perfection. <\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo, who in July taught two tibial tuberosity advancement workshops hosted by VetPrac at two Australian universities, credits his success to a series of remarkable role models \u2013 including his own veterinarian.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cI was twelve years old, I\u2019d just bought a horse, and this guy came out to do a health check. That was the day I decided I wanted to be a veterinarian. I spent every day with him til the day I went to college.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nIrv LeVine was something of a renaissance man, not only practicing as a veterinarian but singing and recording music, flying planes and horsing around. <\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cHis approach to life in general wore off on me,\u201d Mayo said. \u201cThe man just has fun all the time. He doesn\u2019t fight, he doesn\u2019t argue, his medicine was very practical.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nBut Mayo didn\u2019t proceed directly to veterinary school. He undertook a degree in respiratory therapy through Boise State University before working as a respiratory therapist at Duke University Medical Centre.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nA respiratory therapist (RT) or inhalation therapist, he explains, is an allied health worker trained in the assessment and treatment of breathing disorders including asthma, emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. RTs specialise and advise doctors on airway management, mechanical ventilation and acid-base balance. <\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo proved good at it. In less than twelve month\u2019s he had completed every one of the hospitals 16 additional RT qualifications. He practiced for four years until the hunger for veterinary science drew him back to college.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo was recognised early as a gifted student at Oregon State University College, and something of an entrepreneur. He continued to practice as an RT to pay his way through veterinary school \u2013 with the permission of the Dean.\r\n<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cThe local hospital gave me a beeper and if they had an emergency that required an RT the Dean had okayed me to get up and leave. I explained that if the beeper goes off I run off and make money, and if I have money I can pay for my tuition.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nNot that Mayo missed anything in class. In fact, he spent much of his waking time at the University involved in a range of projects. In his first year he co-wrote an NIH grant with the dean on the use of ACE inhibitors in pregnancy.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nEven his study time was productive. Mayo wrote himself 10,000 multiple choice questions. He then wrote a computer program that would randomise the questions and the order of the answers. <\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cThat way it could ask me any of the 10,000 questions I had studied,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was great for learning physiology and anatomy.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo knew the program had applications in other fields, and sold it to a group of RT\u2019s for a tidy profit. Of Mayo\u2019s 34 publications, many of them relate to software. (More recently, Mayo contributed to Odyssey Veterinary Software\u2019s Small Animal Diagnostic Imaging Atlas). <\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo was singled out by his anatomy teacher, Harold Engel.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cTo this day I call him my hero,\u201d Mayo said. \u201cHe was really, really stimulating. I\u2019d be walking up the steps and he\u2019d be walking down and he\u2019d ask \u2018what\u2019s the name of a macrophage found in the liver?\u2019 or \u2018what is the name of the sounds you hear when you listen to blood pressure?\u2019 He did it to me for four years \u2013 like it was his mission to make me learn. The first time I asked me I wanted him to leave me alone but after a while I liked it.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo had had a taste of anatomy as an RT student but hungered for more. His enthusiasm was rewarded: each day he would assist his Professor in setting up the practical classes, reviewing anatomical structures for an hour prior to class. He was then able to assist with the teaching.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nBy this time Mayo already knew he wanted to be a surgeon. His strong grounding in anatomy and willingness to identify structures over and over again stood him in good stead. When he got to final year he completed his surgery rotation not once but three times \u2013 at his own request.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cI just liked it. I was good at anatomy and I had a very good surgery instructor who spent a lot of time with me. We got on really well, and she had no residents so if she was cutting a case I\u2019d scrub in with her. I had one on one time with her for weeks on end and learned so much.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nWhile Mayo\u2019s colleagues were mastering speys, he was assisting on laminectomies and portosystemic shunts.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cShe was a great teacher. When it came to shunts she\u2019d tell me things like not to bother with \u2018stupidograms\u2019 \u2013 she said that she promised that if you go in and lift up the stomach the shunt would be right there. If you can\u2019t name the blood vessel under the stomach its probably the shunt. She\u2019s been right 85 per cent of the time.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo worked for a year in an emergency clinic before purchasing a practice in Lynnwood, Washington, with his former wife \u2013 working for someone else wasn\u2019t his cup of tea.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was speed learning because we had cases flying in left and right and we\u2019d have to patch them up, like Hawkeye in <\/span><\/span>M.A.S.H<\/em><\/span><\/span>. I liked it but I have a problem with authority and people would get mad if I did an FHO at three in the morning even if the owner said they wanted their cat fixed now.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nA year into his private practice career Mayo and his partner purchased a second practice \u2013 also in Lynnwood. Mayo devoted much of his time to learning new procedures in endoscopy, orthopaedics and radiosurgery. He passed the Veterinary Laser Surgical Society\u2019s certification program in 2005. <\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo and his partner ran these practices for 11 years before selling VCA Animal Hospitals, a conglomerate that runs 470 veterinary hospitals in 40 States across America.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019d been so busy that when I stopped I didn\u2019t know what I would do\u2026 but three months later I was busy again.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo attended a number of major conferences, taking the opportunity to network with manufacturers of surgical equipment. One of the companies keen to snap him up as a consultant was Ellman International.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cThey knew about my background in lasers which were their direct competition so they saw it as win:win,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing clinical research for them and its worked out really well.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nHe also works with Securos Veterinary Orthopaedics and As a consultant, Mayo now travels the globe teaching radiowave radiosurgery, rigid endoscopy, techniques in tibial tuberosity advancement, tibeal plateau levelling osteotomy and new techniques of lateral suture for patella luxation. He has designed numerous surgical models for teaching, and is also in the enviable position of being the first to try new surgical equipment. <\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cA lot of this involves being willing to try things that have not been used or done,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a multiple step learning process. If we try bipolar scissors we need to work out a power curve for those scissors \u2013 you can\u2019t just turn them up to 40 and see what happens.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cSo when we tested these we did gross cadaver studies to work out the right power setting for the instrument. Once we decide the power settings we have to get a pathologist to look at tissue samples and determine if there is any lateral trauma. We discovered that there are certain sized dogs in which you can crush the ovarian pedicle, cut with bipolar scissors and not have to tie off.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo was recently made a fellow of the newly formed North American Academy of Veterinary Orthopaedic Surgery.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nBut its not all about cutting. In 2007 Mayo earned his Diplomate status in Canine and Feline Practice through the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners. Every year he locums at a specialist medicine and surgery clinic, seeing medical and surgical referral cases.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cThey\u2019re about three to one medicine cases, so its good for my internal medicine experience,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nHe currently lives in Mount Lake Terrace, Washington, with his wife Laura, who is also the Mayor of the town. When he isn\u2019t practicing veterinary medicine, teaching or lecturing, he flies aeroplanes, plays the piano and guitar and hits the gym.<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nHis advice to aspiring surgeons is simply to keep at it. <\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat worked for me was knowing my anatomy real well, going after continuing education courses that provide the best hands on experience and don\u2019t be intimidated.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nMayo will return to Australia in early 2010 to teach another series of workshops through VetPrac. For further information and to register interest visit <\/span><\/span>http:\/\/www.sigmaweb.com.au\/vetprac\/<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span>\r\n\r\nAnne Fawcett<\/span><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something almost savant-like about world renowned veterinary surgeon Jeff Mayo. He has a compulsion to learn how everything works \u2013 and the quiet confidence that he can master it if he sets his mind to it. Even if that means repeating the same task over and over until he achieves perfection. Mayo, who in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[77,78,80,81,79],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-f2f","tag-face-to-face","tag-ilana-mendels","tag-interview","tag-jeff-mayo"],"rise-blocks_total_comments":0,"rise-blocks_categories":[{"term_id":67,"name":"Features","slug":"features","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":68,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":63,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":67,"category_count":63,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Features","category_nicename":"features","category_parent":0}],"rise-blocks_excerpt":"There\u2019s something almost savant-like about world renowned veterinary surgeon Jeff Mayo. He has a compulsion to learn how everything works \u2013 and the quiet confidence that he can master it if he sets his mind to it. Even if that means repeating the same task over and over until he achieves perfection. Mayo, who in July taught two tibial tuberosity..","blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"67":{"name":"Features","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?cat=67"}},"tags_names":{"77":{"name":"F2F","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=f2f"},"78":{"name":"Face to Face","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=face-to-face"},"80":{"name":"Ilana Mendels","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=ilana-mendels"},"81":{"name":"interview","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=interview"},"79":{"name":"Jeff Mayo","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=jeff-mayo"}},"comments_number":"0","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":305,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}