Roy Hilzenrat began his medical career at 17 years old as a first aid responder on Magen David Adom ambulances in downtown Haifa, Israel, and surrounding villages.
During medical school, he participated in Medical Students for Haiti (MS4H) in which he coordinated an anatomy course in Port-au-Prince, Haiti at the time of the 2018 social revolution and protests. It was then that he began to understand the multi-faceted role of the surgeon as a leader within a multidisciplinary care team, an educator and an agent of systemic change. He graduated from McGill Medical School in 2019.
Roy completed a MHSc and MGSC during residency to support his international work and research.
During the MGSC degree, he has had the privilege of organizing joint rounds with Guyanese surgical residents, completing a scoping review on global surgery learning objectives and competencies and collaborating with Mongolian thoracic surgeons to develop the country’s first minimally invasive thoracic surgery program. During his SURG 560 project on international consensus of global surgery learning objectives, Roy has had the honour of collaborating with and learning from over 70 global surgery experts across over 20 countries. (article to be published soon!)
Roy aspires to pursue a career in thoracic surgery with the goal of improving global equity in thoracic surgical diseases, particularly lung and esophageal cancer. His aim is to serve as a resource for international thoracic surgery and oncology program development. He equally aims to advocate for local under-resourced communities as oncology evolves towards individualized, specialty care.