Page 84 - South Mississippi Living - June, 2018

finding your forte
CHOOSING A SPECIALTY
Doctors Make Decisions
ave you ever visited your doctor and
wondered how he or she chose their field? With more than 120 specialty and sub- specialty options, making that choice certainly couldn’t have been easy.
story by Kelsey Sunderman-Foster courtesy of Garden Park Medical Center and Memorial Hospital at Gulfport
While some medical students go into their pre-med schooling knowing what they want to specialize in, many take more time and experience a variety
of different fields before making a decision. After all, there’s plenty of time to choose prior to the third and fourth years of medical school, which is when students begin their hands-on experience and their career
paths truly begin to take shape.
T. Benjamin Skelton, M.D., practices Internal Medicine
at Garden Park Medical Center. While in his third
year at the James H. Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University, Skelton realized his calling
as soon as he was assigned
a rotation in Internal Medicine.
“What drew me to it the most was being able to look at patients as a whole,” he said. “As people age, their medical issues tend to get more complex, and I enjoyed being able to see the big picture and treat multiple medical problems all at once.”
For Skelton, the relationships he is able to build with his patients is another important factor.
“I enjoy sitting and talking to my patients, and spending time with their families in the office,” he commented. “I understand that when you treat
a patient, you are also treating their families because of the important
relationships that are formed over a lifetime. It’s my goal
to improve people’s quality of life so they can be with their loved ones for years to come.”
Eric H. Wolfson M.D., FAANS,
is the Director of Neurosurgery at Memorial Hospital at Gulfport. While neuroanatomy and neurophysiology always fascinated him during medical school, it wasn’t until his fourth
year attending New York Medical College that he was exposed to clinical neurosurgery.
“I did consider obstetrics/ gynecology, but I quickly switched my interest to neurosurgery after undergoing a rotation early in my last year of medical school,” Wolfson said. “The surgical treatment of the brain, spine, spinal cord and peripheral nerves were what I found to be most interesting during my specialty
rotations. Brain and spine surgery utilizes high-tech equipment and requires extreme precision and attention to detail. I found this to be a good fit for me during my training.”
As a neurosurgeon, Wolfson has the opportunity to perform surgeries big and small. “From emergency cranial
surgeries related to trauma, which can be lifesaving, to performing minimally invasive spine surgery resulting in resolution of the patient’s chronic severe pain, both are extremely rewarding as they positively impact the lives of patients and their families.”
84 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • June 2018
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T. Benjamin Skelton, M.D.
Eric H. Wolfson, M.D.