The AAMC team recently sat down with Dr. Cañadas to learn more about her work. She worked in academics for ten years before opening her own concierge practice. Dr. Cañadas initially used social media to advertise her practice and now uses it to promote patient education. Learn more about ENT below.
Can you describe your work as an ENT physician?
I am a head and neck surgeon that subspecializes in pediatric ENT, but I also practice with adults.
What attracted you to ENT?
The path that I took to break into ENT is atypical. I initially matched into general surgery, but my first rotation as an intern was in ENT. I did my residency at Yale, which is very focused on head and neck cancers, so I frequently watched people with cancer undergo transformative treatments. Seeing these cancer removal surgeries flipped a switch for me, and I decided to change my specialty from general surgery to ENT.
What led you to using social media to promote patient education?
I’ve always had an interest in patient education, even when I was in academics. Before I started using social media, I was very interested in video education for my patients. I conducted several research studies in different languages where I created short-form videos aiming to teach patients how to avoid common medical errors. I found that giving patients medical information in video format was more successful in helping them to fully grasp diagnoses and treatments when compared to traditional methods. My findings in these studies led me to continue using social media to try and decrease the communication gap between patients and doctors.
Can you describe a typical workday?
I’m a locums doctor, which means that I work as a temporary physician at health care facilities. When I do my locums, I keep a busy schedule, working eight-hour shifts and taking night call.
When I’m not doing locums, I have a small concierge practice (no insurance) that allows me to make my own schedule. Without an insurance middleman I am free to schedule directly with my patients as to when I see them. If I need to perform surgery, I find a gap in the hospital schedule and am able to schedule and perform a surgery within a week.
What parts of your job do you find most challenging? What parts do you find most rewarding?
The most challenging part of my job is when a patient doesn’t believe a diagnosis I give and/or doesn’t follow through with the treatment plan I propose. This was especially difficult when I worked in academics. I would see patients every 10 minutes, which left little time for me to ask questions and fully explain my diagnoses and treatment plans.
The biggest reward is treating a condition that was previously thought to be untreatable. As a surgeon, treating and improving a patient’s condition quickly is very rewarding. Moments like these remind me of all the hard work and effort I put into my profession.
What previous experiences have helped you most as an ENT physician?
I was born in Ecuador and am fluent in Spanish. My family moved to the United States when I was five years old, and my mom struggled with English. To help my mom communicate, I had to maintain my Spanish, and it has helped so much in connecting with my patients and giving them information in a way they understand.
How would you describe someone who could excel in ENT?
Someone who would excel in ENT would enjoy surgery and is also a thinker. There are a lot of ailments that occur in the head and neck that are not clear-cut. People will visit the ENT with a variety of issues and to treat them, you must treat the underlying cause of the issue. There are a lot of things that happen physiologically in the body that manifest visibly in the head and neck. To treat these patients correctly, you have to understand that what you are seeing is a sign of something happening systemically. For example, a person with Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Syndrome Type 2 (MEN II) will have bumps on their lips, tongues and even eyes. They may present to you as an ENT doctor with this complaint, but it is important for you to recognize that these patients are at very high risk for medullary thyroid cancer.
It’s also important to understand that ENTs are the masters of the airway. This means that you need to be able to think on your feet and stay calm while treating life-threatening situations such as when a person cannot be intubated by traditional methods, and they are not breathing.
Can you share a case you found especially rewarding?
When I was a resident, there was a call for a patient who was spitting up blood. I went to see this patient and learned she had head and neck cancer. She was having a carotid blowout, meaning massive amounts of blood was coming out of her mouth. This can happen to patients with head and neck cancer once they’ve been radiated because it weakens the vessels. Once I saw that this was happening, I told the nurse to call Anesthesia and the code team immediately. As the patient started to lose consciousness, the code team arrived, and I performed a surgical airway and put in a breathing tube into her neck. The woman had lost a lot of blood, and I was unsure what would happen to her.
When she recovered, I went to visit her, and when I arrived at her room, her husband gave me a hug and thanked me for saving his wife’s life. This patient lived three more years, and knowing I helped lengthen her life was highly rewarding.
What advice would you give to students who are just beginning their journey into a career in medicine?
First, doctors learn through experiences, so as you go through your path into medicine, think of things you enjoy doing and how it could apply to various specialties. Second, if you end up matching into a specialty and decide it’s not for you, you can always change specialties. I changed specialties and, many of my classmates changed specialties. It’s more common than you might think!
To learn more about Dr. Cañadas and her work, follow her on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. You can also visit her website for more information.