5 Questions With... Dr. John Berry-Candelario, Here at UMass Memorial Health Care, we are proud to have a team of extraordinary people doing extraordinary work every day. Now, we want you to meet some of them! Meet, John Berry-Candelario, MD, Medical Director of UMass Memorial Spine director of spine and spine oncology at UMass Memorial Health Care and professor of neurosurgery at University of Massachusetts Medical School.
1. Please describe your role/typical day at work: What I love about my role is no day is the same. One day I might be removing a spinal tumor or correcting a deformed spine. The next day I might be engaged in meetings with our leadership team to oversee the development of our spine center. And then on another day, I might be leading our resident and advanced practice provider teaching sessions followed by several hours of grant writing and clinical research. Ultimately, no day is the same, and that makes every day exciting. 2. Why did you choose the profession you are in? When I was a kid, I used to have seizures. It was a difficult time, especially for my parents because the doctors couldn’t figure out why I was having them. My mother, who is one of the strongest women I’ve ever met, would tell me that those seizures wouldn’t stop me from being whatever I wanted to be, even if it was a neurosurgeon. She would check out books from the library about the brain, and I remember thinking…when I grow up, I was going to be a doctor that studied the brain. 3. What is the most rewarding thing about your job? First and foremost, I get to work with some of the most incredible people in our faculty, resident, APPs, admin, and clinical staff. Together with my team, the most rewarding thing about being a neurosurgeon is when we help our patients navigate some of the most challenging moments of their lives. Sometimes that challenge is a disc pressing on a nerve causing pain and weakness; other times, it is helping a family confront the harsh reality of cancer. Either way, it is both incredibly rewarding and humbling. 4. If you were not in your present role at UMass Memorial, what do you think you would be doing as a profession? I would go back to one of past careers where I use to coach football. There’s something
amazing about working together as a team; to succeed and fail together, realizing every victory has a lesson, and no failure is final. Neurosurgery and spine surgery teaches me similar lessons. 5. Tell us one interesting or “fun fact about yourself I can wiggle my ears!