Finding Purpose and a Place to Grow Together

Sara Keely Schultz, MD, FACP, acknowledges the grind of medical school and that she was beginning to feel the drag and burnout of the journey by the time she got to her ID fellowship at Temple. However, when she started at Temple things clicked for her and it gave her a boost.

“This was exactly where I was supposed to be. The people are amazing. I was seeing cases that excited me and challenged me,” Schultz said. “And what I learned is that the purpose of fellowship is to learn and to grow, and less to work. And I really felt like the work life balance made sense now as a fellow...Fellowship is really a time to stretch your wings and to be who you were meant to be.”

Schultz stayed at Temple and has grown into becoming the director, Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program, Temple University Hospital, and professor, Medicine, Lewis Katz School of Medicine. She discusses the benefits of having all the fellows work at Temple Hospital only and how that translates to learning opportunities and a sense of togetherness.

“We have enough people to do the work and learn together without being overburdened by traveling to different hospitals and taking calls at all these different places….We're able to all be together so we can have lunch every day, and we can go to lectures together, and we can learn together and round together in a way that feels like you're part of some social and institutional culture.”

She reinforces what was said in other segments for this series and the idea of the unique cases being seen in a big city hospital that includes infections related to HIV, substance use disorder, international travel, and transplantation.

“I feel like the days are never boring. Every day is different. Every case is new,” Schultz said.