A simple calculation nets a world of opportunity for one future doctor

Third-year medical student Carson Fairbanks knew he wanted to be a doctor.  He just wasn’t sure where he wanted to go to medical school.

After graduating from Big Sandy High School in Dallardsville in southeast Texas (in a class of barely more than two dozen students), he began studying biomedical sciences at Texas A&M University because, he said, “It was the most logical choice for a future medical student.”

As a Joint Admission Medical Program (JAMP) participant, Fairbanks interviewed at all eight Texas medical schools, including the Texas A&M Health Science Center (TAMHSC) College of Medicine, while still an undergraduate.  Having met the academic requirements, he was guaranteed admission to the school of his choice. 

Ultimately, it all came down to simple math.

“I’ve always wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon,” Fairbanks said.  “So I looked at the stats, and the [TAMHSC] College of Medicine placed the greatest proportion of graduates per class in orthopedic surgery residencies than anyone else.”

From there, his journey through medical school has been nothing short of impressive.

In the past three years, Fairbanks has served on the TAMHSC College of Medicine Admissions Committee where, he says, he gets a chance to meet many qualified applicants.  He’s also a member of the Christian Medical Association and the surgery and emergency medicine interest group.  He was even asked to volunteer with ADAPT (short for Academically-Driven Anatomy Peer Teaching), a group of second- and third-year medical students who mentor first-year students in the gross anatomy lab.

I would tell future students, even first-year students, ‘Do this because you love it,’” Fairbanks said.  “You need to get involved in the medical care of humans—as an ER scribe, a phlebotomist, an EMT, whatever it takes—to make sure that you can care for people at their most vulnerable times.  My classmates and I, we do this because we want to care for those people.”

According to administrators, Fairbanks’ enthusiasm and dedication are obvious.  Gary McCord, M.D., Associate Dean for Student Affairs, noted that he would gladly choose Fairbanks as his own physician, and apparently many of the young man’s classmates feel the same.

At the annual Cadaver Ball in 2009, Fairbanks not only received the Vesalius Award, an honor bestowed upon the student with the highest academic achievement in his or her first year, he was recognized by his peers as the class’s physician of choice.

Visibly moved, he said, “Knowing that my classmates believe in me like that—it was just amazing.”

Between his first and second years of school, a summer elective took Fairbanks to the Texas Brain and Spine Institute in Bryan.  While there, he assisted at least one day a week in the operating room, performed clinical research with J. Bradley White, M.D., Assistant Professor Surgery and Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics, and wrote a paper about an aneurysm case study that was accepted for publication in the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery.  The paper was published in October 2010.

When we caught up with Fairbanks, he had just completed a twelve-week surgery rotation in Bryan-College Station.

While on my surgery rotation, I spent every day in the OR intubating patients, starting IV lines and placing central lines,” Fairbanks said.  “In my first week I placed ten central lines, and most students wouldn’t get to do that until their fourth year.”  (A central line is a tube placed into a large vein in the neck, chest or groin that administers medication, drains fluids, etc.)

When asked about the future, Fairbanks said he would eventually like to return to a rural area like his hometown where he was involved in many school and community activities.

“The things you learn in a small community, you can’t put on paper,” he said.  “The teamwork, the leadership—you can’t duplicate that in a large town or city.”

Those qualities keep him balanced—the key, Fairbanks said, to surviving medical school.  It’s a lesson he learned when he bumped into Former President George H. W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush while fishing in one of the Bush Library ponds a couple of years ago.  As it turns out, presidents need balance, too, and Mr. Bush keeps the pond stocked in case he ever wants to fish.  Fairbanks figured if a former president could take time to fish, so could a student.

“You’ve got to have a hobby.  You’ve got to go on dates,” he said. “Don’t put your life on hold.  Get out there and interact with people, because they’re the ones you’ll care for as a doctor.” 

Pictured top, l to r: Joseph Iero, M.D., Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery; Carson Fairbanks; Barry Veazey, M.D., Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery.  Pictured middle and bottom: Carson, Dr. Iero and Dr. Veazey discuss orthopedic surgery at Orthopaedic Associates in Bryan, October 2010.