Episode 30: Sunday January 17

Drs. Sam Jejurikar, Salvatore Pacella, and Sam Rhee kick off another season with a special solo multi-part interview. Drs. Sam Jejurikar, Salvatore Pacella, and Sam Rhee welcome special guest Dr. Stephanie Cohen MD.

In Part 1 of the podcast, Dr. Rhee talks to Dr. Cohen about her experiences on the road to becoming a successful plastic surgeon. If you are interested in learning how successful people overcome challenges and adversity, this episode is a MUST WATCH!

Dr. Cohen is a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon by the American Board of Plastic Surgery located in Maywood, NJ. She completed plastic surgery training at the New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. There, Dr. Cohen developed a special interest and skill in the area of reconstructive surgery, especially concentrated on the breast. Her dedication to the craft has earned her the nickname of the “breast whisperer” from her fellow colleagues and patients.

A long time dream of Dr. Cohen’s was to travel to developing countries and provide expert surgical care to those who have no other possible access to medical care. This became a reality in 2007 when she became a founding member and Vice President of ISMS Operation Kids.

Full Transcript (download PDF here)
2021 S02E01 TRANSCRIPT DR COHEN PART 1
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:00:00]  Today's guest is Dr. Stephanie Cohen. 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:00:03] Hello, 
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:00:04] How are you, good to see Steph. She is a board certified plastic surgeon in Maywood, New Jersey, and she's affiliated with Hackensack university medical center. She's been in practice for more than 20 years. Stephanie, Dr. Cohen did her undergraduate work at Brandeis university in Boston and earned her medical degree from Georgetown university school of medicine, where she was a member of the alpha Omega alpha honor society.
She then went on to complete her general surgery residency at St. Vincent's hospital in New York city. And she is a certified by the American board of surgery. in addition to, doing her plastic surgery residency at New York hospital Cornell medical center and the Memorial Sloan Kettering cancer center in New York, where she got her certification in, by the American board of plastic surgery.
She, developed a special interest and skill in the area of reconstructive surgery, particularly. And the breast, her dedication to her craft has earned her the nickname of the breast whisperer from her fellow colleagues and patients. And that is absolutely true. I've heard that a number of times, a long time dream of Dr.
Cohen's was to travel to developing countries and provide experts surgical care to those who have had no other possible access to medical care. And this became a reality in 2007, when she became a founding member and vice-president of ism S operation kids. Op kids is a surgical mission dedicated to the treatment of pediatric surgical and medical disorders.
And through yearly missions to places such as Kenya, Egypt, Peru, and others. Dr. Cohen has operated on hundreds of children's with disorders ranging from cleft lip and palate to debilitating burns. Dr. Cohen's website is Cohen. Winter's plastic surgery.com. And she's located at one 13 West Essex street in Maywood, New Jersey, zero seven six zero seven and their office phone number is (201) 487-3400.
So welcome, Stephanie, how are you? 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:02:00] Thank you, Sam. Good. It's nice to talk to you. Thanks for doing this. 
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:02:04] See each other at meetings. now more virtually than anything else, at Hackensack and I just wanted to, have other people learn more about you. And I also wanted to learn more about you. I think there's a lot of awesome plastic surgeons in Northern New Jersey, and I certainly think you are one of them for sure, 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:02:19] Thank you very much.
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:02:20] And, I would like to first start because we all have interesting origin stories, more or less. I think, and I wanted to hear how you started on your plastic surgery career and what brought you into it? 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:02:34] Sure. I was born, to be a surgeon. I don't think I had another choice. my father was an obstetrician gynecologist and, and I was the first born.
I was supposed to be a boy and it didn't happen. and, he, from the time I was in the crib used to say, surgery is such a great career for a woman. Surgery is such a great career for a woman, and I didn't realize that he was lying until I went to medical school. it, it's what I heard for a very long time.
And I was, I really was, originally, very artistic when I was a kid. And, I thought in high school that I was going to go to art school, not go to, a, irregular undergraduate college. And, I had some art classes with, with an art teacher in my high school that I got very close to and she knew my, she knew I had a.
talent for science and a father that was very interested in me going to medical school. And, she said to me, you can always be an artistic doctor. You can't really do it the other way around. So she said she encouraged me to go to college and, to take it from there because I could always become an artist if I wanted to.
But if I had given up the idea of going to, a regular academic college and then medical school, she knew that there was. Really not any turning back from that. and so obviously, by the time I got to college and did my pre-med and then decided I wanted, I did want to go to medical school.
the art was the perfect segue into ending up in plastic surgery. The plastic surgery piece was really, I can definitely pinpoint, Dr. Paul , who was, very famous, granule facial surgeon, way back when, and I can actually remember being about 12 years old and watching, something on TV, where there was a video of Tessier, performing a hyper Taylorism surgery and, by coronal incision and they had peeled the face down and everybody in the room behind me had gotten up and ran out of the room.
And, I thought it was like, Coolest thing I ever saw. And, I really never changed my mind about that. when I went to medical school, I always knew that when I went to medical school, it was going to be, to do a surgical subspecialty. I was going to do something with my hands, cause I'd always been.
Very handy and very artistic. And if it wasn't medical school, it was probably going to be architecture school. I was going to do something physical. and so the idea of being a pediatrician or being a radiologist, it was just never gonna, that was never going to happen for me. So I always wanted to do something, use the knowledge that I had science and anatomy and use my hands to do something as I've always been very technically.
adapt to things when I tried them. going into surgery was the natural course of that. I went. Why, when you and I did our general surgery residencies back then everybody did general surgery residency. You didn't go directly into plastic surgery. I don't want to date you or anything, but I'm dating myself.
So that, and that's fine. back then everyone went through five years of general surgery. We all became, at least board eligible or board certified in general surgery before we chose, what we were going to do with our specialties, following that. And, when I did go into general surgery with an open mind that I was going to look at all the different sub specialties and see what I like.
And, when I had been in medical school, I had done a rotation in, in the children's hospital of Washington, DC. When I was at Georgetown, it was very heavy craniofacial oriented and, I had an attending there. His name was Michael Boyajian and he was the cranial facial surgeon there. And, another moment in my life where I spent a month doing that and I said, Oh, this is what I want to do.
I could do this for forever. And then I went and did my general surgery residency, and a lot of years went by because general surgery takes a really long time. And by the time fourth year came around, when I had to apply for plastic surgery again, I said, you know what, let me just make sure this is really what I want to do.
So I went and actually spent a month of my vacation, back down in Washington, DC at children's hospital. in unofficially rotating with Dr. Boise. And again, Just to make sure that was really what I love to do. Ironic because this is not really what I do for the most part of my practice.
But, but I did love it as much as I had the first time. And then, went and finished all the things you have to do in order to get into. Plastic surgery was lucky enough to match it. Cornell and New York hospital, which was a wonderful place to train. And, interestingly enough was very, hands-on very clinical, just like my general surgery residency at, at St.
Vincent's had been okay. And, interestingly, while I was there, Cornell did not have a, a very strong, tendency towards cranial facial. but we did do a lot of cancer, reconstruction, and we did spend a lot of time. Memorial Sloan Kettering. And, so when I was there, I was, I was learning a lot about, microsurgery learning, a lot about breast reconstruction and breast cancer, and headed in that direction.
And, but I would always go back and spend a little bit of time doing cranial facial and any chance that I had, in order to be a cranial facial surgeon, as you need to have a fellowship in cranial facial surgery. and, I had, two little. The kids at that time. And the husband who had just started in his practice and, seven years of residency under my belt, not to mention four years of medical school.
And my husband said, if you do another year of school, I'm going to divorce you. so at that time, it was a little bit impractical, to consider applying to places all over the country. And, and. going wherever it took to get, craniofacial fellowship. so I took the plunge and, and went into, and went into the plastic surgery practice and, started doing what I knew how to do, very well, which was a lot of complex reconstruction, and, and, Breast cancer reconstruction.
And, it got toned over the first few years. whereas my partner was more interested in doing chest reconstruction and extremity reconstruction that it naturally fell to me to do the breast reconstruction. And, so I. kept on in that it kept on in that mode. part of the reason why, and I know we're going to get to this, but part of the reason why I ended up starting this, medical mission trip was really, again, back to get back to my roots of loving cranial facial surgery, and really being able to do a little bit of that, because that really brings the artistic side into it as well.
before we get into your career after training, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your training, listening to it. The first is, I am familiar with St. Vincent still. 
same sentences St. Vincent is a bunch of condos right now, which is really sad. yeah, they, the hospital went under.
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:08:59] Yeah. And I remember, I did interview there, and they were very busy. I think that the case numbers that the residents quoted when they were there were higher than almost, any residency program. But I also remember them as not being Plastic surgery friendly. They felt like I felt this distinct.
if you're going to come here to do plastic surgery, that might not be the best place for you. 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:09:22] You have a good one. You have a very good memory a long time ago, because that was absolutely, the, the, the chairman's desire was that no, general surgery trained, resident would go into plastic surgery.
and it became the program that was known for that, don't come here and end up doing plastic surgery. and it was interesting because when I. when I, applied to my general surgery residency there, I had told them that, one of my, one of my interests was plastic surgery that I hadn't decided that, I had a whole bunch of things.
I love trauma. I loved pediatric surgery. I loved, oncologic surgery. I guess I could have always ended up at breast surgeon instead of a breast reconstructive surgeon. but, obviously I got my, categorical spot there. And once I started, as a resident, there were six residents in each year.
when I was there, we started off with five. We ended up at six, and of all the residents that were in every year, I think in my year, Three of us or four of us ended up going into plastic surgery. and, and it went much smoother for me than it did for my fellow residents, because I was straight with my chairman from the day I got there.
I said, listen, I am going to learn, general surgery. I know one of the major problems at the general surgery chiefs. had with people going into plastic surgery was you took fi you train, I understand it. You trained for five years to be a general surgeon, and then you quote, unquote waste your training, which, we could get into that as a whole other podcast of how much better it is to have general surgery under your belt before you drained to be a plastic surgeon, but, different topics.
But, at any rate, I was straight from my front, with my chairman from the time that we started. And he always knew that I was thinking about doing it so that when I did and I promised him when I graduated, I'd take my general surgery boards and, and I would pass them. And his concern was that a lot of people who went into plastic surgery ended up saying, what do I need the plastics or the, general surgery boards for, and that goes on his stats.
if he graduates six general surgeons and only three of them take their boards, then that. Looks that doesn't look good for him. So it's just philosophic and also a bit of a, just a kind of logistical thing. but I said to him all along, I said, look, this is what I'm interested in.
I'll let you know in another year or two, whether that's what I want to do. And I was straight with him from the very beginning, everybody else in my program. Didn't tell him they were terrified. They didn't tell him until they were fourth or fifth year residents. And they were applying, as you apply in your fourth year of residency and, they didn't tell him until they were applying.
And he got very angry and they all asked me how come you didn't get angry at you? I said, because I told him four years ago that this is where I was headed. You gotta be straight with people, so that's a kind of habit. that's kinda how that happened. And that's how I got to Cornell as well, because the new year.
Seeing everybody knew everybody. And, I had looked at Columbia and looked at Cornell was very, interested in staying in the New York, in the New York area. My husband was at Columbia. He's a doctor as well as a child psychiatrist. And, and so we, we wanted to stay there and that's how that happened.
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:12:17] back then also, the work hours were pretty. Horrific and the work environment has really changed, especially for women. There's no doubt it's gotten, it's changed over the years and I remember, So much. I always felt like there was bullying in general in surgery. They bullied you for whatever weakness you showed or whatever characteristic, if you were really short, if your skin color was different.
Yeah. 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:12:47] Head redhead, 
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:12:48] whatever they could find, they would pick at it. because it was, and many people are pretty miserable experience in misery loves company and they would always try to, and, and let's face it. A lot of it was very mailed it's. It was male dominated. There were very few women attendings.
There were very few women. I don't think, I don't even think there were any women chairman at the time, that I can remember. And, And I saw that with my colleagues. how did you manage that? And what were your experiences like? 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:13:20] I have a couple of interesting anecdotes about that. Of course. again, the original anecdote of my father telling me that surgery was a great career for a woman and me realizing that he was lying.
I started off at Georgetown in medical school and Georgetown was. Very surgically oriented. I think a larger number of residents from George of medical students from Georgetown go into surgery than almost any other specialty. so it's very surgically oriented. We did a lot of surgery in, in our medical school training.
and, I knew that's where I was headed. they were also very. Misogynistic, at, at Georgetown it was very male and very military and, and, very, it was very helpful to be tall and, and, and, masculine, and that was certainly, things that were helpful in getting to be known and getting them to write you.
Good recommendations. I had a resident. I had an attending. no. She was a resident. I'm sorry. She was a resident in general surgery when I was rotating as a medical school at Georgetown. And. She was a general surgery resident. She was either a second year or third year. she seemed, incredibly old to me at the time.
And, she said, if you can find anything else, you like half as much do that. and I couldn't find anything else I like to have as much. so I knew that I was, I knew that I was headed that direction. I looked around and you alluded to it before there weren't. Any mentors, for women back then, even if there were some women in general surgery.
I didn't know any women in plastic surgery, but even if there were women there, when I say mentor, somebody I might want to hang out with. so either they had gotten there, and they were mean and nasty. or they had gotten there and, they were single and not married and no children. and so I looked around and thought, gee, there's just really nobody who is, who's done this.
and, yeah. I, it's hard to say where, at what point you said yourself, all right, I'm going to do it anyway. but, or I can do it and I can do it differently than other people. I had a, one of the men who ran the, the operating room and in my general surgery program, when I first got there, he was the guy who sits at the front desk and everybody gets to know him.
And he ever had, gives you your schedule and everything. And he said to me, you're too nice. You're never going to end up this. Nice. When you graduated from your general surgery resident, And I said, no, I'm gonna. And he said, no, you're not going to, you're not going to be this nice. He says, I've seen it a hundred times before you're going to come in.
You're super nice. you talk to people, you don't look down on people by the time you graduate, you're going to, you're going to be a real pain in the ass. And I bet him dinner that I would graduate the same way that I came. And he bought me dinner when I graduated. And, because it's just, they call me the Teflon queen when I was in residency.
They, I have always had a pretty good sense of self. and, and I'm not the best, I don't, I don't, I'm not the smartest, in the room, but, but I know what I want to get done and I'm a perfectionist and I want to get it done. And I want to know it and that's for myself, it's not for anybody else, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of sort of Terry, you were terrible in the ICU. you're awful. You're the worst resident we've ever had. And I was just like, okay, whatever. And, that's just somebody venting to you that day because they're upset about something or they're, they're not happy.
what, one thing that I always, could fall back on was, technically I always was very confident person. So again, back to that whole, I knew I had to do something physical with my hands. When I got into the operating room. Most of the time, there was nobody in the room that could do it better than I could.
So I was never unconfident about that. And when you are that way about, yourself and I'm a really not comfortable tote in my own horn, But that was just something that was always so obvious, that it, that nev I, once you're confident in that you can do it.
what everybody else around you might say or do doesn't, it doesn't really matter all that 
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:17:09] much. It, that is unusual because, I think you're right. You have to have a lot of, you have a lot of intrinsic. Teflon-esque quality. Yes. 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:17:18] Yes. Teflon queen. That was my title. 
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:17:20] And also you, unfortunately you have a lot of people who are in the same situation.
A lot of women feel like they were, they had to be the better, they were better than. Many of their peers around them. And that's the only thing that sort of sustained them was that they knew that and that, was able to keep their confidence up and maintain, their spirits. Even though they knew there was a lot of crap flying their way.
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:17:47] Yeah, my husband and I have a joke that, and it's a joke for us now. we've been married 30 years, but we both went to Georgetown together and we actually met each other in medical school. In our first year of medical school, started dating, in the middle of our first year of medical school and got married a week after we graduated from the school.
But we did our general surgery rotation together, as third year medical students. And I'm the chairman of. Urology, we had a rotation with him and he was real hard ass. And, the general surgeons had at, at, Georgetown were like, they're real good, old, Southern good old boy cowboy boots.
And, and, they, that. That's the way that they were. And, the chairman of the department would, have a, a didactic session with the medical students. And it was a lot of, direct questioning and, you had to get the question, And, my husband's joke, which was it's not so much of a joke because it was really very accurate was, my husband.
Ended up a psychiatrist, but he was very interested in the surgery and, the excitement of surgery and the intensity of surgery. And he was very interested. He was very good at it. And, they would, they would, it, during these educational sessions, they would, they would say, Peter, Can you explain to me what that big organ in the middle of the chest is?
And it goes, lugged up, love job. What is that? And he'd go the heart and they go great. Great, brilliant. and they'd say Stephanie, and I'd be like, what? And they'd say I'm a red blood cell, the superior mesenteric artery. Get me to that. Yeah.
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:19:12] Right. 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:19:14] and I go. And I get, three quarters of the way to where they wanted me to go. Okay, time's up? You didn't make it. And that was seriously the way that had to be. Yeah. Seriously, the way it had to be. You just had to turn. Yeah. It is what it is. And I'm sure that, as more and more, women do more and more, lots of different kinds of, career paths.
There are certainly still some that are out there like that. surgery is certainly come a long way since then. And, yeah. so again, I, again, you just had to shut your head to it cause you knew what it was about it wasn't about your ability. Or your intelligence? it was really more just about, what people's own entrenched ideas about who should be as about who should be a surgeon.
and also the time until they operated with me, and I had attendings in general surgery where, I would move their hand out of the way when something wasn't happening in the right way. And I would, get to stitch or do the thing. and there were, lots of drama surgeons and times when, you know, we'd walk out of the room and they'd be like, yeah.
Okay, thanks. and, it was just an under the table kind of thing where it doesn't have to be acknowledged. it just. It just is, that's just the way it is. And 
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:20:24] I think the one thing about surgery and especially back then, because we had so much more latitude and responsibility, especially as senior surgeons, that challenge did rise to the top.
They knew who were good and who are not good, who they could trust and not trust. And regardless of what. Prejudices they had, if you were good in the, or that's what hopefully mattered the most for most senior surgeons, I would think. That was the one saving grace about surgery, I would say for sure.
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:20:52] Absolutely. 
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:20:53] when you were at Cornell, who were your. Mentors. who do you think influenced you, when you were training in plastic surgery there? 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:21:00] Oh, Lloyd Hoffman, who I do believe you interviewed at some point on this show and, Dr. Lloyd Gale, was really, fast and hard.
Second. we also used to, Rotate at, Sloan Kettering, where I worked very closely with David Hidalgo and Joe diesel was a fellow at the time. Yeah. He was a fellow the first year that I was there and then became the first year attending the second year that I was there. and Peter Cordero, of course.
do you 
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:21:26] have any best or worst moments that you remember from your residency? Oh, shit moments or, Oh my or that was awesome. 
Dr. Stephanie Cohen: [00:21:34] That was fantastic. Oh, my goodness. Wow. That's a good question. best Mo I'm sure that, those stories come up when you're operating all the time, when you start telling stories and you have these great, moments where you think of something that happened and you're like, Oh wow.
That was, that was really great. and, and, and then there are those, and then, the bad ones I have, I have, my favorite Lloyd Hoffman story, who I have so many, lines that I still say for Lloyd Hoffman, all complications go away eventually, have patient has have patients, there's so many things that I take from the way that he did things.
and he was such a, he has such a, a demeanor about him that was just so calming, and didn't use to usually get. Get hysterical. And, when you go from the general surgery residency to the plastic surgery, residency, you've, you're ready to go into practice.
you've done five years of general surgery and everybody else around you is going into general surgery. They're like getting practices and getting paid and all kinds of, you're ready to go into your own self. you've got a lot of confidence at that point.
You've been a general surgery, chief resident, and you're ready to go. And then. The way we did it was then you went into plastic surgery, residency where you almost started like an intern again. And it was very difficult, moment for me, it, in my, career, of training, I had just had my second child.
And so I was a little bit postpartum and, I, I got to residency and I was like, I hate that. I hate this. I don't know anything. And I should know everything, and, I felt very unconfident at that moment in time. And, What my ver I had started my, my first plastic surgery rotation at Sloan Kettering.
So I hadn't been at Cornell when we first started. So it was, maybe six months into my career and at Cornell that I was finally rotating through the main hospital and meeting wide Gail and Lloyd Hoffman. And I was doing a tissue expander exchange to permanent implant with, Lloyd with. The Lloyd Hoffman.
And it was my first time I had operated with him and, he, he was having me close the muscle layer and he, as he was saying, don't put the needle through the implant. I put the needle through the implant and it's the only time in my entire career I have ever. Popped an implant with my own dude. And, and he started jumping around in the operating room and say, that was the one thing I said not to do because we had.
Just gotten the food plan in there. It was probably the only one we had in the operating room. It was terrible. It was terrible. and I thought, Oh my God, he's gonna think I'm the, I'm the worst person on the planet and I'm horrible. And, and, and about a full year later, I was a second year resident and, it was coming to the end of residency and they were looking at the new, Applicants for the, the year after, and Lloyd had called me up.
And, and, he had been asking me about a resident that had applied that was at St Vincent's hospital and was coming and obviously had come through the same path that I had and wanted to ask me what I knew about the resident. and I'll never forget this because he said, is that resident as good as you.
And I literally like, yeah. Oh yeah. Felt like I was about to burst into tears and just like just that, it changed everything. I just couldn't believe that he thought that I was good at what I did. so it was, that was a big, that was a big turnaround. So that qualifies his worst and best things that have happened in the operating room.
Dr. Sam Rhee: [00:24:56] It's funny earlier in my training, I did the, exactly the same thing. Closing an implant, on a breast organ and nicked it with the needle. And it was awful. And we do live through our mentors, do live through us because every implant closure I do at least for a second, or probably for more many seconds, I think about that.
And, I will always remember it. That will always be burned in my brain as well. and everything you quote with your mentors, everything you say, they live through us, which is, which i s fitting, I think in many ways,