Dr. Emily DeSantis, MD

Specialty: Pathology

Subspecialties: Board Certified in Dermatopathology and Anatomic Pathology

Background

Dr. DeSantis was raised in North Carolina and earned her B.A. in philosophy from Wellesley College where she graduated Magna Cum Laude. Subsequently, she attended medical school at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine where she also received the Janet M. Glasgow Memorial Achievement Citation which recognizes Vanderbilt's female students who graduate as part of the top ten percent of their class. Dr. DeSantis also completed her residency specializing in pathology (anatomic pathology) and then completed her fellowship in dermatopathology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

After completing her fellowship, Dr. DeSantis served as the Director of Dermatopathology at a regional reference laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She also became a clinical assistant professor in the University of New Mexico in the Departments of Dermatology and Pathology. Her role at the University of Mexico also included overseeing teaching programs in both departments.

While Dr. DeSantis specifically specializes in dermatopathology her particular interests include melanocytic lesions, cutaneous adnexal tumors and lymphoproliferative disorder.

Dr. DeSantis also has lots of board experience and certifications. Not only is she board certified in anatomic pathology and dermatopathology, but she is also a member of the College of American Pathology, Americans Society of Clinical Pathology, American Society of dermatopathology, and Texas Society of Pathologists. Dr. DeSantis now lives in Austin with her husband and kids.

More about Anatomic Pathology:

Anatomic Pathology is the study of organ pathology, either inflammatory or tumor pathology in all the various organs of the body.

More About Dermatopathology:

Dermatopathology is the study of skin pathology and a subspecialty of dermatology and pathology. Dermatopathology is one of many different subspecialties of pathology including cytopathology, hematopathology, and more.

In order to become a dermatopathologist one must first specifically become an anatomic pathologist. Dermatopathologists "receive the biopsy specimens, look at the tissue and make the diagnoses whereas the dermatologists treat the patients."

"A dermatopathologist is a highly trained physician who specializes in diagnosing disorders of the skin under a microscope. The subspecialty of dermatopathology is a combination of both dermatology (the diagnosis of skin, hair, and nail diseases) and pathology (identification of disease microscopically)."

Q&A Interview

Q: What experiences in your personal and professional life inspired your career in the medical field?

A: "So I, actually, when I was growing up, never considered going into medicine because my father is a physician, and he was one of those doctors who would work all the time. I never saw him and every time I heard him talking, like, about work or on the phone or a call, it sounded like another language to me. I just thought, I don't know what he's talking about, and when I went to college and majored in philosophy I was about as far away from medicine that you could get. I think that the lab science that I took was astronomy, and then I worked for a couple of years after college in a psychiatric hospital thinking that I wanted to go into psychology. The more I spent time at the hospital I realized that the thing that was really helping people there was medication, and that in order to be able to offer people medication you need to go to medical school. I kept having this thought kind of pop into my head: you should go to medical school, think about going to medical school, and then I king of pushed it away thinking, that's crazy. I didn't even take biology in college, but then I just couldn't push it away anymore. I had to go back and take all of the pre-med classes, and take the MCAT, and there were so many other specialties and things to learn about that I really I kind of just kept an open mind, and then eventually decided on pathology. I was definitely not a person who knew I wanted to be a doctor from the second I was born. I convinced myself later on and it turned out to be the right thing."

Q: What sort of challenges did you face as a woman pursuing a career in the medical field?

A: "I remember, when I was interviewing for medical school, I was in Texas at the time. I was applying to a lot of Texan schools, and I remember several interviews where I was interviewing with a man, maybe an older man, who, even though they aren't supposed to ask you in your interviews anything regarding your gender or mention anything like that, there were several people who actually said: How do you think you can actually do this? How do you think you can do all the things you want to do? And then when I said that I believe that I can, they said well that's not actually true. Then I decided that's not a medical school I want to go to. So it did start to help me choose where I wanted to be, but then as I went to med school and through my rotations, I think I was always very conscious of is this a good field for women. Is this a field where I can do all the things I want to do. I can have a family; I can have a life outside of medicine. There really were some specialties that were automatically just ruled out or excluded, because I didn't feel like it was something that was possible. I mean I would like to think that I could have gone into any specialty I wanted and had all the things that I want in my life, but I I mean, just realistically it's kind of not the case. If you're at the hospital for 20 hours a day, and you're on call all the time and you have lots of emergencies it's hard it smart to manage everything. I think it's good to just kind of have a a realistic perspective"

Q: How did you decide your specialty?

A: "Pathology is actually a specialty that I knew nothing about when I went to medical school. Pathology actually means the study of disease, so during our second year in medical school we had a pathology course, and we had this amazing teacher. This professor was in charge of the whole course, and she was a woman with five kids. She had triplets and two other kids, she was super smart, she was really organized, she had a great sense of humor, and she just was a really good role model. She was just someone I really looked up to. I thought well she seems to really like what she does. The more I studied pathology, it was not something I had done before, but I realized as I started to do it that I am a very visual person, and pathology has an extremely visual feel, so it just kind of clicked with me. I thought about other specialties as I went through my rotations, but I just kept going back to pathology, and thinking I really like being able to kind of spend my time with a microscope and and then serve as a consultant for other doctors. A pathologist is often called the doctors' doctor because you you don't see patients directly, but you interact with other doctors all the time. It's just a really nice position in the end, and I think as a pathologist on this side of things you kind of end up seeing everything. Maybe not every day, but certainly every week I think I see something that, I either have never seen before, or haven't seen for years. It really keeps you on your toes for sure."

Q: What advice would you give to young girls who are interested in pursuing a career in the medical field?

A: "I feel like the more information you have the better off you are earlier you get that information you're even better off, so I think talking to as many people as you can, and really talking to them about what they do, and different aspects of different specialties are are frustrating for different people. There may be something that someone tells you like this is a part [of the medical field] this is something that just drives me crazy, but depending on your personality, you might be like that actually sounds really good to me so the more information you can get from the most people you can I think I think it's a really smart thing to do. I think just keeping an open mind and just knowing that even within specialties there subspecialties, and there are there so many different opportunities within the medical field, so just keep an open mind and kind of always new ideas and things to consider."

Q: Given the inherent challenges and stress involved with medical school, residency and practicing medicine, how do you manage and cope with the ups and downs of your career?

A: "I actually, I feel incredibly lucky to have chosen the field that I did for many reasons. My hours are a little bit more flexible than a typical position. I get these trays full of slides and glass slides and I look at them on my microscope, so when I come into work my I might have some slides waiting for you throughout the day, but I don't have patients waiting in a waiting room who are going to be really mad if I'm 5 minutes late. I can kind of get to work within a reasonable time frame, then I can do my work at a pace that works for me, and then when I'm finished I'm finished. It's it's very different than a clinic schedule or a surgical schedule or anything like that. I think a lot of people when you when you think of what you want to be, and what you want to do, you sort of imagined the perfect life and I'll have my 2.5 kids, and everybody will be healthy, so it will all just work out. In our case, we had a baby who had cancer and so that was something that was obviously very disruptive to work life and home life, but I was able to keep working through that. It was a lot it was harder for my husband because he had patients scheduled, and he had to cancel a day he has to reschedule 60 people, but if I can go to work and my colleagues would cover, I would just go to the next day and do what I could. If I hadn't had that flexibility, I probably would have had to stop working for a while and then pick up again after we got through that. I feel really lucky that to kind of do everything during that time and I think in a lot of situations that wouldn't have been possible."

Q:How did patient treatment cause challenges with patient care due to COVID-19 in your field of medicine?

A: "I do skin pathology now, so I work for a dermatology practice. In general, I think we were affected mostly because other specialties had to shut down, but we didn't know whether people are going to come back or stay away. Surprisingly it actually picked up very quickly once we opened up again, and I felt really nervous when we were shut down because even though a lot of what we see is kind of run-of-the-mill and not life-threatening, but we also see some things that truly are emergencies and cancers that can be very aggressive and need treatment. When we did open back up again for those first few weeks, we actually saw a higher percentage of very scary diagnoses and aggressive cancers and things. In terms of actually interacting with COVID, we just followed all the precautions in the office. The patients were, for the most part, very very accommodating, and everyone was kind of on the same team."

Q: What would you be if you weren't a doctor?

A: “Honestly what would I be if I weren’t a doctor is something I actually think about quite a bit, because I think having gone through what we went through with my son, being on the other side of medicine and on the patient side, having to navigate the whole medical system, and realizing how difficult that is and how challenging our system is for patients. I have often thought that I would be if I were a doctor. I would be something having to do with patient advocacy and someone who helps guide patients through the medical system. It is a really complicated system if you don’t know anything about it, you don’t know how to advocate for yourself, you don’t know how to navigate through insurance companies, and getting appointments. It’s very hard, and I felt really fortunate my husband and I both had enough experience and enough exposure beforehand that we knew how to get through. It’s really very very complicated, and a lot of things can fall through the cracks if you don’t know what questions to ask or you don’t know the right questions to ask, so I think that is what I would be. The other thing I think about a lot is being an advocate for patient’s mental health because that’s another part of our system that’s really lacking. There are a lot of people, when I make a diagnosis, where something really really serious or life-threatening and could truly change the person’s life. I always think about how this is going to affect them and there’s a huge mental health component. Between going through treatment or just trying to get through it and our system needs to do a much better job supporting people, helping them, and knowing that they’re alone. I feel pretty strongly about that. I have these moments when I think I go I should start my career over and start a mental health crusade or a patient advocacy crusade.”

Q: What was your proudest moment as a doctor?

A:“I don’t know if I have the proudest moment. There was one thing that was really neat was that I went to medical school at Vanderbilt. At Vanderbilt, if you have a family member with a medical degree, they can give you your diploma when you graduate, so my dad gave me my diploma at graduation. I think that was a really special moment because was the reason I was afraid of medicine. I kind of joke with my colleagues, and it seems like maybe once a year we have a diagnosis of the year when we see a challenging thing that we haven’t seen before or something really rare that if if you don’t think about it you’re not gonna be able to diagnose. Probably about once a year there’s a kind of diagnosis of the year, where we get it right, and we get the patient on the right track.”