#  Fifth-Year Resident Publishes Perspective Essay in New England Journal of Medicine 

 





February 04, 2020

 

 

   ![Dr. Alessandra Colaianni portrait](/sites/g/files/omnuum8391/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/oto/files/colaianni.jpg?itok=JDhm9ODR) 

 

Last week, Harvard Otolaryngology Chief Resident [Alessandra Colaianni, MD](/people/alessandra-colaianni), published a perspective essay in the *New England Journal of Medicine*. This piece, titled *Fun*, shares Dr. Colaianni’s experience in the operating room throughout her years of training. She explores a question — and answer — posed to her during medical school about why a particular surgeon does what he does. "He turned to me and asked, 'Why am I doing this?'

 Having prepared the night before, I started to explain that the patient had previously been diagnosed with gastric cancer and had undergone curative surgery, but was now suffering from the most common cause of bowel obstruction — “adhesions,” internal scars left by her prior surgery around which loops of her intestine had twisted, causing unremitting vomiting of bright-green bile. This routine surgery would relieve the twisting, and her symptoms.

 But the surgeon stopped me midway through my explanation: 'No,' he said, smiling behind his mask and drawing the knife through her skin, 'we’re doing this because it’s fun.'”

 [Read on.](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1909360)



 

 

 



 

 

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