MEMBERS
DR. Who
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
SANDRA SENESHEN, MD
Aaron Burch
O
ne of the most interesting parts of our Dr. Who series
has been discovering what a melting pot Louisville is
for the health care community. Since the series began,
we’ve featured extraordinary physicians from around
the world who just so happened to choose Louisville/
Southern Indiana as a home for their practices and their families.
That exploration continues this month as we meet Sandra Sene-
shen, MD.
Dr. Seneshen was born and raised in Saskatoon, the largest city in
the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, where she lived for almost
30 years before moving to the U.S. When she took a general surgeon
position at Jeffersonville’s Clark Memorial Hospital in 2000, Dr.
Seneshen found her surroundings familiar.
“Louisville and Saskatoon share a similar mix of rural and urban
communities,” she said. “When I’ve taken vacations to the Dakotas
and Montana, it made me realize there is often more in common
culturally in north to south strips than east to west.”
Growing up in Saskatoon was not unlike growing up in Louisville.
As a young girl, Dr. Seneshen painted, acted in numerous plays
including the Sound of Music and Damn Yankees, and took ballet.
“Anyone who has seen me trip in person would be terrified of
what I’d be like without those ballet lessons,” she laughed.
Dr. Seneshen’s parents were both teachers, and they encouraged
her and her older sister, Cheryl, to apply themselves as much as they
could. “My grandfather came from the old country, Ukraine, so I’m
only second generation. And they have that push of ‘You’re going to
get more educated.’ So, I like to say I went to school on the Barabash
Scholarship Plan, which was my mother’s family. They helped me
with fundraising, and I lived at home so I could graduate with only
$4,000 in debt. I was very looked after,” she recalled.
At the time, the University of Saskatchewan was still operating
on a British model of training. That essentially means that Dr. Se-
neshen completed one year of undergraduate courses followed by
five years of medical school.
“I was 22-years-old when I was graduated from medical school.
That is not unusually early if you started college at 17 but I don’t
think you necessarily have the maturity for medical school at that
age,” she laughed. “I remember as a medical student, sitting on the
floor working on something, and the chief resident and his gaggle
of students burst through the door, coats flapping in the breeze and
clearly going somewhere important. And I remember thinking, ‘I
want to be that confident.’ I don’t know when that transition hap-
pened. But yes, I march down the hallways now.”
At the time, future surgeon Dr. Seneshen knew that the one thing
she wouldn’t be was a surgeon.
“I’d had some experiences with surgeons, and they were all jerks.
But, those same surgeons who I was particularly unimpressed with
turned out to be some of my favorite teachers,” she said. “And the
first time I walked into an operating room, it was like falling in love.
It was just the best thing I’d ever seen.”
Dr. Seneshen soon decided this was it. This was the career for her.
“I looked at six years of post-graduate education and tried to think
of something I’d like more. I couldn’t,” she said. “That’s how you
get a student to be a general surgeon! You make them decide when
they’re 22 and they aren’t thinking, ‘I’m going to be very tired later.’”
In her fourth year of medical school, Dr. Seneshen took a 4-month
elective journey to Fiji and New Zealand, spending two months
at each. “Fiji was… highly educational,” she said. “They still have
leprosy, and their leprosy treatment is not dissimilar from Saskatch-
(continued on page 28)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to Louisville Medicine’s member spotlight section, Dr. Who? In the interest of simply getting to know each other
as a society of colleagues, we’ll be highlighting random GLMS physicians on a regular basis. If you would like to recommend any GLMS
physician member to the Editorial Board for this section, please e-mail [email protected] or call him at 736-6338.
JUNE 2017
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