Dr. Bernard Park: love the technical aspect

The 2^nd International Conference of Asia Thoracoscopic Surgery Education Program (ATEP) was held successfully in Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Seoul, Korea from Dec. 4^th to 5^th, 2015. In the conference, Dr. Bernard Park, from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, made an excellent speech on the Robotic-assisted minimally invasive thoracic surgery based on his last thirteen years of experience, earning a lot admiration from the audience. During this conference, the Editorial Office of Journal of Visualized Surgery (JOVS) had the great honor to have an interview with Dr. Park (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Photo with Dr. Bernard Park.

Dr. Bernard Park, Deputy Chief of Clinical Affairs of the Thoracic Surgery Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, is one of the world’s leaders in robotic video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) lobectomy, a minimally invasive lung surgery which can decrease recovery time. He published one of the first large studies of robotic lobectomies using the DaVinci™ surgical robot and regularly uses VATS to perform a wide variety of thoracic surgeries, such as lobectomy, segmentecomy, thymectomy and metastasectomy. Dr. Park is board-certified in cardiothoracic surgery specializing in general thoracic surgery. He completed his residency and a fellowship at New York Presbyterian Hospital at Weill Cornell Medical Center before going on to additional fellowships at the Mayo Clinic and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

In the interview, when talking about the standard of training in the robotic-assisted thoracic surgery, Dr. Park mentioned that future surgeons should know the disease process so that to decide the best choice of robotic-assisted surgery and as well to appropriately apply the technology into the procedure to improve patients’ condition. For the training, Dr. Park also emphasized the importance of having a comprehensive understanding of the advantage and disadvantage of the robotic-assisted surgery for the benefit of patients.

Besides, Dr. Park also shared with us his advice for surgeons to update themselves to keep pace with the thoracic world, for example, to read and see what other people are doing, attend conference, pay attention to what technology company are doing and creating.

At the end of the interview, when talking about the question written on a post board in this year’s American College of Surgeons (ACS)—what do you love about surgery, Dr. Park instantly told us his answer—he loves the technical aspect of surgery (Figure 2)!

Figure 2 Interview with Dr. Bernard Park (1). Available online: http://www.asvide.com/articles/755

Acknowledgements

None.

Footnote

Conflicts of Interest: The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.

References

1. Gao S. Interview with Dr. Bernard Park. Asvide 2016;3:004. Available online: http://www.asvide.com/ articles/755

(Science Editor: Skylar Gao, JOVS, jovs@amepc.org)