Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to JBJS Ortho Corps. Listen as members of the ortho community, residents, surgeons, educators, staff and patients share their stories about the experiences and people most important in their lives and the lessons they learned along the way. OrthoCorps is an audio archive inspired by StoryCorps and independently organized by the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Thank you for joining me. If you don't mind just introducing yourself and letting us know kind of where you did your training and where your career was.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: So I'm Jim Kellogg.
I went to medical school at Toronto University of Toronto, where I then did my orthopedic residency and at that point then did my first fellowship there at Sunnybrook, which was just beginning as the trauma center, and then spent doing six months of a sports medicine fellowship, which I don't let many people know, in the orthopedic trauma realm.
Then Harborview for three months and then in Switzerland and DeVos at the research institute for three months and came back and took up a job in Toronto as sort of the, probably the first orthopedic trauma surgeon full time at the university.
So that's my career. And then from there spent 10, 11 years there and then moved to Charlotte for 24 years and then to Houston for the last nine years, which seems like such a short time, but you look at it, you go, nine years. I look back and say, I've been, What is it, 40, 43 years? Yeah. And you go, that's a long time. But I can remember 43 years ago, like tomorrow or yesterday sort of thing. So that's my career.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Right.
So how did you first get interested in orthopedic surgery and specifically trauma?
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Well, it started initially.
I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.
So I played football in high school. I was pretty good. I ended up playing at the University of Toronto.
And I went there because they guaranteed me a place to start. Although I got into medical school at three other schools, I didn't in Toronto. And so I had to finish that. And then I was going around and trying to figure out, well, am I going to go to medical school or not?
And so finally I came to the conclusion that, okay, I would do that, but in the meantime, I'd spent a lot of time in nuclear medicine, so I thought, well, that's fun to do that. And then I got in and during the summers at times, I started to meet a few orthopedic surgeons at that time and began to look at what they were doing and think that's sort of interesting. And then got finished medical school, realizing that I was not going to be an internist or anything else, that I was going to be a surgeon. And then it was a matter of peeling off what was I liked and what I didn't like. And it came down to the fact that orthopedic surgery represented to me a specialty in which you could basically look after people and return them usually to something that was worthwhile.
Most other surgical specialties, never. It never really turns out the same way. Well, same orthopedics, but I think you have a better chance.
And then orthopedic trauma came into it. Two reasons. One, I didn't. Once I got into orthopedics, I went through. It was fine, but I didn't really get a lot out of the sports medicine side of it, even though I did a fellowship, because that was partly where I was going to do a job at one time.
And.
But what I did enjoy was the critical care stuff and the surgical side.
And the only real way you could put those two things together in orthopedics was orthopedic trauma.
Now, when I decided to do that, there was really no such thing as an orthopedic trauma surgeon. There was Bob Meek in Vancouver, who was. Had sort of moved ahead, but he was several years ahead of me, and he had sort of pioneered Canada.
In the US you had the major sort of, you know, at Harborview Shock and these places, you know, Harborview and Shock were probably the two places in which people did orthopedic trauma alone, but everywhere else it was sort of a mission mishmash. And so it came back. And then when I came back, as I say, Sunnybrook began about three or four years before I got there as a resident, had become the first major trauma center in Canada or in Ontario. And at that point, they needed somebody to now take that over. And that's sort of how I evolved and my career.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: What year was that?
[00:04:58] Speaker A: That would be 1970.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Great.
So what specific mentors influenced you and how.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Oh, that's a lot.
I saw that question. So I've tried. I've organized it in my mind. So if I look back on it. So I was. I've been very fortunate. Wanted to train with several heroes in orthopedics. But Myra Tile, who basically, if you look at Marv, what Marv taught me, what he mentored me in on, what it meant to be a physician, what it meant to deliver patient care, what it meant to be a patient advocate, and the importance of patients in your practice. Shatzker, Joe Schatzker, who I worked with, basically taught you surgery. He taught you the precision of surgery, what it meant, what the importance of that was. And then there was a third guy who I worked with and in fact, it's interesting maybe Gordon Hunter, who was my first attending as a PGY one and I became his partner and we shared an office for 10 years and Gordon taught me how to live. Okay.
He helped be a guy, you know, raise family, what family meant and sort of put those things. So I was very fortunate to have three individuals who basically mentored me through into what an orthopedic, successful orthopedic career meant.
After that, there were a whole bunch of other ones. You know, I was in Harborview when Hanson was there and Winquist were there and they had a major effect doing on, on me and, and the ideas there, you know. And Ted biggest thing Ted taught you was to think out of the box, to, to just, you know, do what you think is right based on principles.
And then as you evolve through your career and you move into it, and it's interesting, make it dated here, but Bob Proby's talk and as you go through there and he shows the various mentoring people through his career. Same with me as I moved through this, you know, in the OTA as president and into the AO foundation, there were individuals care had nothing to do with, with medicine, with surgery. Marcus Rao, who was the, basically the CEO of the foundation, previous Swisscom president.
I got my MBA out of him. Okay. I learned, I learned how to gain consensus. I learned how to work with people. I learned the art of negotiation with him and, and that sort of thing.
There's a woman by name of Joan Russo who ran AO education for North America. I don't know if you ever ran into Joan, but Joan was a magnificent individual in teaching you how you know, you know, organization, what you do. Never. Everything's going to work out. You have a plan. And it's interesting on the different individuals who you see throughout your career and how they influence you. So there's a few of my mentors.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: What lessons has your work life taught you?
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Work hard, okay?
Don't fight the system, change it.
Don't get yourself tied up in a knot over things that there is no way that it's going to change. You just have to figure out how the system and you've got how this. You've got to make the system work in your environment and in you for you.
And I think that's a lot of what goes on today. Is people tend to want to beat up on the system or throw their hands up and say, oh, it's horrible. I can't do it. The answer is, I'm sorry. I like medicine. I like looking after patients.
And for me, I've got to make this system work so I can do what I want to be. And I think that's probably the biggest lesson I've learned throughout the.
Throughout my life. And that also, that you get to where you want to get by consensus, by don't. By lack of yelling. I learned soon in my life, at the beginning as an attending, that stamping up and down and ranting and raving and yelling and things, nobody cared. You know, like, everybody tells you that is true. Everybody looks at you and goes, what's wrong with you?
And you soon learn. And that's one of the things that Marcus Rao taught me was the whole ability. If you want to go somewhere, you just guide people and you work on them. You find out where they're coming from.
He had an interesting thing to bored me. We never voted on anything. He said, you never have a vote. The reason you don't have a vote is it means somebody has to make a decision.
If you create consensus, then everybody can live with their opinion and agree and sort of an interesting philosophy of how you can. And you can move things along and you haven't irritated anybody and someone hasn't, you know, you voted against me and, you know, and this sort of thing. So. So there. There's sort of some of the things that I've learned throughout the progress.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: So what are you the most proud of?
[00:10:21] Speaker A: What am I most proud of?
I'm most proud of.
I must say that several things. One of my most proud of, and I think, you know, is where orthopedic trauma is today. Okay. Having been someone who began in it, someone who sort of went, you know, I was lucky. I was invited as the first Canadian to the Orthopedic Trauma Hospitals Association. It was a meeting held in a room about this size, about 10 or 15 people in it, and look what it is today. It's 3,000 members. It's $18 million in research funds.
And it's all part. We're all part of that. And, you know, I've had a leadership role in it, and it's a very. It's something to be very, you know, very proud. The other thing that is really I'm proud of is my fellows.
It's residents. You train residents, and that's fine. But your fellows are your pick, and they're the individuals you worked with, and they're the individuals that sort of carry your legacy on.
And, you know, sitting with bicycle went Tuesday night talking about it. And, you know, we looked around and Kyle Jarret was there and he's new president of aoa. And, you know, and these base all comes through our place now, whether we had anything to do with it, I have no idea, but we think we did. And that makes you pretty proud that you can see these guys becoming successes in their lives and doing the right thing. And then the other thing, that final thing that makes you prouder, which happy is, is your patience.
And when you look back on it, and it's sort of interesting as you get into this practice longer and longer. I now have patients who suddenly under the blue, I get this email, Dr. Callum, I found you. I said, you know, I just want to tell you what you did to me back 25 years ago. It's so good. Or that now they're trying to send their children to me in Houston, which, you know, so I got to find someone in Houston to do this. And, you know, and that makes you really sort of proud of what you're doing in that point of view.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: So do you have any regrets?
[00:12:38] Speaker A: No.
And on honesty, I do not have any regrets about what I did. You know, I do it again, you know, over and over again. In fact, you know, my. I've got my son, you know, who. Who has now become an orthopedic trauma surgeon and is moving along. So, you know, that's another sort of proud legacy of things. So, you know, he. He's seen the light. Okay.
I've shown him the way.
But again, no, I don't. I think it's a great. It's a great field. I think it's, you know, you. You can't find a better place to do it. I would not want to be doing anything else. Why would I ever change what I did? So no regrets.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: If you could talk to a younger version of yourself, what would you say?
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Well, I think just. Just what I said is that focus, work hard, know what you want to do. Define.
Define where you want, you know, what is your, you know, your goal, which is hard to do when you're a young person, but particularly if you're coming into medicine and that sort of thing, really seriously figure out where you're going. I think a lot of people today really don't. It's not something that they put through their minds. It's medicine is this or that. They get into it and then they really don't know what's going on and they get misled. But really, I think if to make sure that people understand that they've got to have a focus and that's. They've got to be committed to that. Okay. And the other side of it is too, is the importance in your career of your patient.
Without patience, this job is a pretty boring job. It's piecework, you know, you go to the awar every day and you hack out eight or nine cases.
Big deal, you know, okay, that's wonderful. I look great. I can put a big X ray up, but that gets a little boring after a while. It's when you see the patient in the clinic, when you have to see them and what, they have a problem or there's a complication or something along those lines, or just the ones that come back and they're happy as can be and make you happy. So they're A very important thing that you have to realize is that's why did you go into medicine, you wanted a medicine to look after people and you better keep those people attached to you and you better be able to do that. And it's a very important part of it. So I think those are the issues things I would tell somebody coming into it today.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Are there any funny stories or characters from your career that you'd like to share?
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Oh, funny stories or characters?
Oh, there's a few funny stories I can tell you. One of the former, the first editor of the Journal of Orthopedic Trauma, Phil Spiegel, years and years ago, used to have an AO course in Toronto. And I became faculty, was there starting to lecture.
And I remember having to get up and give a talk and federal shafts and did all this. And Spiegel was the moderator of it. So it was, in fact, it was talk. It was finished and then it was lunch. So I walked over and I walked off the podium with him and I said, well, Dr. Spiegel, you know, tell me how did I really do?
And he looks at me and he goes, oh, I fell asleep.
Thanks, Dr. Spiegel. But you know, that was sort of, you know, still.
But he was always, always sort of the character. But then he would tell me what, you know, what, what to do. But I'm trying to think of other funny.
There's a bunch of them. You tend not to. Tend not to remember what they are.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: That was a pretty good one.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah, but, you know, there's. There's a. There's a bunch of different things. Some of them I can't tell you. Yeah.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: So, last question. For generations listening to this years from now, is there any wisdom you would want to pass on to them?
[00:16:56] Speaker A: I think I've done it. Okay.
It's, it's. What I've. What I've said is realize why you're here. What are you here for?
That your patients are important.
Work, work to make the system evolve and work for you and for your patients.
And don't try to fight it. Don't run away from it.
That point, it's interesting that if you look at any given time, so everybody's holding their heads and weeping and wailing, oh, medicine that's falling apart. It's going to be awful. Well, I can tell you, when I went into medical school and things, all the guys who were ahead of me or who were doctors and surgeons, guess what? You don't want to go into medicine. Oh, it's horrible. It's going to fall apart.
So it's never going to go away. It's always going to be here. It's always going to be evolving.
And you've got to find your position in it, and that's the answer. And learn. Learn to build the consensus, build a collaboration and make it work for you and everybody else.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Great. Well, thank you so much.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: You're welcome.
