Josh Wiedermann is a senior associate consultant who practices Pediatric Otolaryngology. He currently lives in Rochester, MN, United States.
Read on to find out more about Josh, his background and experiences, what lead him to the field of global surgical care, the MGSC, and more!
What has inspired you to study and work in the field of global surgery?
Between 1st and 2nd year of medical school, I was given the opportunity to make educational materials for Baylor International Pediatric AIDS initiative (BIPAI) in Botswana. I didn’t know much about medicine back then, but it opened my eyes to what medicine could be. Jumping forward 7 years and I was reaching the end of my ENT training when my best friend (OB/GYN) joined the American Peace Corps and went to Liberia. She inspired me to combine my passions (teaching and medicine) and I eventually partnered with Mekelle University in Ethiopia to help shape their Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery residency program. I lived there for a year doing that and that’s what ignited the fire to make this a career.
What are some of your hobbies & interests? What do you love to do in your spare time?
I am an avid soccer player, travel by way of my stomach and do the occasional tough mudder races when not in a Pandemic.
What advice would you give to prospective students?
Global Surgery is just on the leading wave of a big paradigm shift in surgery globally. If you have interest, get involved now, learn and experience as much as you can and find a mentor to help connect you along the way.
I understand you have an experience in helping set up the Otolaryngology residency program in Ethiopia. What inspired you to work in low resource settings and what are some of your key lessons and experiences that you would like to share with our readers?
You can see above for the inspiration. Through my time there, I was able to personally experience many of the fallacies that physicians from High Income Countries (HICs) bring to Low/Middle Income Countries (LMICs). Those mistakes opened my eyes to why certain issues in global surgery have never been improved with our current models of global surgery. In training we are always told that “you don’t know what you don’t know”. I never really knew what that meant until I tried to practice medicine in a culture I knew little about.I tell all of my mentees now; when you are planing to go abroad, never assume you know what is best and instead ask what is needed. To help with this, its best to partner with a local clinician months before you visit in order to start asking those important culturally-specific questions.
Is there any work/document/article that you are currently working on that you’d like to promote? Our community would love to find out what our students are currently working on. How can our community learn more about you? (Website, Linkedin, Youtube, etc)
We are about to launch a global surgery podcast series at the end of June that can be found on Headmirror.com (A free open access educational source for otolaryngology). We speak with experts around the world about different aspects of global surgery ranging from its history to its ethics.