Discover how Mark Besançon, DVM, blends engineering and veterinary medicine, fueling his passion for surgery and innovation in the veterinary industry.
On this week’s episode of The Vet Blast Podcast presented by dvm360, Mark Besançon, DVM, shares with our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, more about his current career in veterinary medicine, including the beginning where he started out in a completely different field and industry, and how his previous experience and love of animals fuels the work he does today.
Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity.
Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: I love that you have such a passion for surgery? Did you always have that passion? Did you kind of grow into learning and loving surgery?
Mark Besançon, DVM: Yeah, so I like to work with my hands. So, you know, I was very engineering mindset growing up. And so I always wanted to work with my hands. And so this was a way that working with animals, you're able to fix them with your hands doing surgery. And so that's always been something that I've enjoyed. There's some people they love internal medicine, you know, I enjoy actually manipulating the bones and tissues with my hands and fixing them. They say a chance to cut is a chance to cure so I enjoy surgery.
Christman: That’s great. And I know you had an interest in engineering right?
Besançon: Engineering was actually the degree path that I was going for through college. And so when I graduated with that associate's degree, I'd done all of the calculus [classes] and was working towards engineering, and went off to the 5-year college, and that first semester my next class was differential equations. And I walked into the class, and the professor started talking. I literally stood up and walked out, went to my advisor, said, ‘Cancel all my courses’, and then I started taking all the prerequisites for veterinary school, and then got in so switched that literally on a specific day, made that decision change. And [I am] glad I did, because I'm still able to do some of it through some of my innovations, but also help animals with the veterinary degree.
Christman: I think that it's such an interesting and unique combination that you have, because to your point, you're an innovator, and having that background of engineering as well as veterinary medicine, allows you to come up with these ideas.
Check out Besançon’s most recent article on dvm360.com here: The washered-anchor technique