Pulling Back the Curtain
Dan Pollyea, MD, MS
In this edition, Dan Pollyea, MD, MS, talks about his early experiences as a
“physician’s assistant” and how he learned to talk to patients. Dr. Pollyea is clinical
director of Leukemia Services and associate professor of medicine at the University
of Colorado Cancer Center.
Dr. Pollyea, his wife, and their three
children on a trip to Japan.
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ASH Clinical News
What was your first job?
Officially, my first job was as a
counselor at a summer day camp
when I was about 14 years old.
The camp was in Columbus, Ohio,
near where I grew up, and one
that I had gone to as a camper for
many summers.
Unofficially, I served as unpaid
labor for my dad. He was a primary-
care doctor in a community hospital
in an underserved area of Columbus,
and he gave all of his patients our
home telephone number.
He was not an early adopter
of answering machines, so my
two sisters (one younger and one
older) and I grew up answering the
phone and taking messages from
his patients. Looking back on it, it
seems weird (this was definitely a
pre-HIPAA era), but we got pretty
good at it! We’d record their names
and phone numbers, why they
were calling, and what problems
they were having. My dad would
give us feedback about the notes
we took, and we got to know the
frequent callers and their problems
pretty well. It was good training for
taking a patient’s history!
He’d also put us to work filing
in his office – there weren’t any
computers, either – and sometimes
I would tag along when he would
round on patients on the weekends.
I was always underfoot, I guess.
Did you choose to go into
medicine based on those
experiences?
It was a big part of the decision.
I enjoyed learning about the pa-
tients’ lives and what my dad did
to help them, and I wanted to
keep learning more about that.
When you started down
the path to becoming a
doctor, what drew you to
hematology?
Honestly, I hadn’t given hematol-
ogy much consideration before
I entered medical school, but
when I was a resident at the
University of Chicago and trying
to figure out what I wanted to
do, Andy Artz, MD, MS, spent
an extraordinary amount of time
and effort mentoring me. He was
my fellow when I was an intern,
and he introduced me to the
field of malignant hematology.
He also introduced me to Koen
van Besien, MD, PhD, the head
of bone marrow transplant at
the University of Chicago at the
time – and a devoted and invested
mentor. Their enthusiasm was
contagious and, ultimately, I was
able to see a career path that
would be equally exciting for me.
Part of what attracted me to
the field of malignant hematology
was its highs and lows. When you
treat patients with acute leuke-
mia, you need to be comfortable
in the intensive care unit and
in the clinic and you need to be
ready for patients to quickly tran-
sition between those extremes.
You also have the opportunity to
deliver the best possible news a
person could imagine – and the
March 2019