Mark Wainer, MD, FAAOS
Orthopaedic Surgeon
Knees, Shoulders, and Hips Specialty
Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Santa Cruz Division
Santa Cruz, CA
Member Since: 1980
If you were mentoring a new member, what important advice would you give them as they progress in their career?
Happy patient, happy doctor. Remember that every day you are doing something truly meaningful for other people. Aim for a healthy work–life balance so both your professional and personal life are more rewarding. Choosing when to retire is rarely straightforward; you will probably end up deciding between retiring too early or too late. Retiring too early is unlikely to be a source of regret, but retiring too late may well be.
What aspect of retirement surprised you the most?
The surprising thing about retirement is that, even with a sparsely populated calendar and very few obligations, there still never seems to be enough time to do everything you would like to do.
What hobbies do you enjoy in your spare time?
I have been an avid photographer for 60 years. I enjoy golf and travel.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself that not many people know.
I served as the sole instructor for the first two arthroscopic surgery courses ever held in Russia, in Samara (1994) and Moscow (1995). Each course brought together about 110 orthopaedic surgeons from across Russia, including some who had traveled from as far away as Siberia. During these courses, I delivered the didactic lectures with an interpreter and then moved to the operating room, where my procedures were broadcast with simultaneous internal arthroscopic and external views for the audience.
At that time, I routinely performed arthroscopic knee surgery under local anesthesia, and I wanted to demonstrate to the participants that they could adopt this approach as well. As I screened patients for an ideal demonstration case, a man walked into the clinic wearing a gun on his belt, who turned out to be the lion tamer for the Moscow circus. I performed a partial medial meniscectomy using only a local anesthetic, and, for dramatic emphasis, had him rise up from the operating table, unassisted, and walk out of the operating room immediately afterward. I also performed the first outpatient arthroscopic surgery in Russia.
I also have a photography website: www.markwainer.com