Week 2 - Justin Levine

 #2 - 06/12/2026

For the second week of our immersion experience, the focus was on continuing shadowing and getting more immersed in clinical rounds. We got to meet Dr. Min, president of the hospital, at our weekly Tuesday meeting, and heard an interesting talk from Dr. Elemento. I found Dr. Elemento’s talk to be especially illuminating as both my lab and Dr. Spector’s lab collaborate with Dr. Elemento’s group to use their patient-derived breast cancer organoids. In fact, incorporating these organoids into the Spector lab’s biomimetic breast cancer model system is the main aim of my summer research, so I was grateful to be able to ask Dr. Elemento questions about his work directly. 


In the OR this week we spent one day viewing two separate neurosurgery cases, both of which had Dr. Spector and his team come in for repairing the surgical areas after the neurosurgery team was finished, and another day watching a roughly eight hour-long mastectomy and breast reconstruction operation. The neurosurgery cases were very interesting, as we got to see both neurosurgery and plastic surgery in action (and, of course, anesthesiology), and we took note of the differences in practice between the two groups. Neurosurgeons expertly removed infected pieces of patients’ skulls and used equipment I had not yet seen to flush out injected areas with antibiotics, before plastics came in and used specific suturing techniques and staples to repair the scalp. It was also very interesting to watch Dr. Staig, the attending neurosurgeon, and Dr. Spector collaborate on cases, working together to decide which courses of action would be best. The all-day surgery the next day tied together multiple operations we had shadowed last week: after the double mastectomy was performed, an abdominoplasty was used to harvest the patient’s own adipose tissue to use in reconstruction. Major veins and arteries from the belly tissue were connected with vessels in the chest via microsurgery, which was fascinating to observe on the screen. 


After seeing surgeries Tuesday and Wednesday, Pooja and I accompanied Dr. Spector and his team on clinical rounds on Thursday morning. Being able to see the patients I had seen in the OR now on the road to recovery was my favorite part of the week - seeing them recovering well one or two days post-operation was a gratifying experience, even though I of course was not the person who had operated on them. It gave a ‘full-circle’ feeling to the process, which I think has been extremely helpful in aiding my understanding of the clinic. We also accompanied Dr. Spector on his clinical appointments and consultations, where we were able to chat some with patients (most were very curious about the Immersion program). I was very impressed with Dr. Spector’s memory of his patients’ personal lives, even when he had not seen them in months, and I greatly enjoyed the variety of interacting with many different people in a short amount of time. Overall, this past week has helped me feel like I better understand the works of surgery I am seeing, both in the OR and before and after any procedure.


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