QC: Finding Your Endometriosis Surgeon

Dr. Melissa McHale, a gynecologic surgeon specializing in minimally invasive endometriosis surgery, shares expert guidance on finding qualified surgeons for endometriosis treatment. She provides practical strategies for evaluating surgeon credentials, training backgrounds, and professional connections to ensure patients receive care from true specialists capable of performing complete excision surgery.

• Research where potential surgeons received their training and who specifically taught them endometriosis surgery techniques
• Ask direct questions about when endometriosis became their focus and how they developed their surgical skills
• Consider that most fellowship-trained gynecologists in the US aren't adequately trained in complete endometriosis excision
• Evaluate the surgeon's professional network—those who regularly associate with other endometriosis specialists likely stay current with best practices
• Look at both patient reviews and professional reputation among other physicians
• If you wouldn't trust their mentor to operate on you, question whether you should trust them

Have questions about finding the right endometriosis specialist? Send them in through the link in the episode description, email contact@endobattery.com, or visit the endobattery.com contact page.

Chapters

• 0:00 Quick Connect Introduction
• 0:42 Dr. Melissa McHale's Background
• 1:42 Verifying Surgeon Qualifications
• 3:55 Determining Surgeon Credibility
• 5:01 Closing and Contact Information

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Life moves fast and so should the answers to your biggest questions. Welcome to EndoBattery's Quick Connect, your direct line to expert insights Short, powerful and right to the point. You send in the questions, I bring in the experts and in just five minutes you get the knowledge you need. No long episodes, no extra time needed, and just remember expert opinions shared here are for general information and not for personalized medical advice. Always consult your provider for your case-specific guidance. Got a question? Send it in and let's quickly get you the answers. I'm your host, alana, and it's time to connect Today.

Speaker 1: 0:42

I'm excited to welcome Dr Melissa McHale, a gynecologic surgeon specializing in minimally invasive endometriosis surgery. Known for her compassion, patient-centered care, dr McHale combines advanced surgical skills with dedication to truly listening, educating and creating individualized treatment plans. A graduate at Boston University School of Medicine, she completed her residency at the John Hopkins University Hospital before training for two years with internationally recognized endometriosis specialist, dr Andrea Vidali. She's also highly skilled in dynamic ultrasound to map and diagnose endometriosis. Dr Miguel takes a multidisciplinary approach, often collaborating with specialists from other fields, and has a special interest in patients with conditions like hypermobility, pots and MCAS. Her mission is to improve early diagnosis, reduce delays in care and help patients everywhere reclaim their quality of life. I'm thrilled for you to hear from her today. Let's get started. What do you think is the first step in trying to find a surgeon?

Speaker 2: 1:47

So the first step really is establish whether or not this person is qualified, right, and so you know some of the things. It's like do the background research on this person right? Like, did they go to medical school, right? Like, yes, I'm sure they did if they're a surgeon. But like, where did they go? Where did they do residency? Did they do a fellowship? And then, who taught them to do endometriosis surgery? Right? Is this something that they learned in fellowship? Did they have a specific mentor? Did they learn it after fellowship? Like, really try to figure out. Like, okay, if even most fellowship trained gynecologists in the US don't know how to do a complete excision of endometriosis surgery, how is it that this person knows how to do it? Right, if they trained at the university of wherever for their fellowship, but you can't find anyone at the university of whatever who you would trust to do your surgery, okay, well then, if this is where that person trained and they taught them everything they know, is this person really qualified or not really Right?

Speaker 2: 2:48

And sometimes someone got extra training after fellowship, they were mentored by somebody, these kinds of things. You know, everyone has a different journey and it's not always necessarily about where they did fellowship, but figure it out. Don't be afraid to ask like when did this become your focus? Is this something you learned on your own? Did somebody teach you, did somebody mentor you? Right? If you wouldn't let their mentor operate on you, consider whether or not they should operate on you, right, Like you know, and some of it's about personality but a lot of it's about skill, right? And so really look into where they learned to do that stuff, right?

Speaker 1: 3:25

Well, and I think that's something that is hard, because, as a patient, we don't always know who's credible and who's not. How do we decipher that as a patient If we don't really? You know, like you and I, we're kind of in this endo community, pretty thick into it, you know, so we have, we know who's really good, we know who's credible. But for people who don't know and they're just starting this journey how would you go about figuring out if someone is credible or not?

Speaker 2: 3:55

So there's a few different, you know a few different things you can look at. Right, there's all these different lists, right, people talk about lists on social media and those kinds of things of who is qualified, who believes in excision, all those kinds of things. Right, you can look at the sort of reputation both from patients, like what are their reviews, that kind of stuff. But also what do other doctors say about them? Right, because often you know you can sort of tell what what doctors associate with other people whose whole world is endometriosis. Right, if somebody is spending all of their time with other people who totally focus on endometriosis, it's because they're, they're like you and me. They feed off of constantly thinking about how to get you know better at providing endometriosis care. Right, if they're like totally on their own, nobody refers to them. They're, you know they're not doing all of these things to forward their knowledge, then you know that should give you pause.

Speaker 1: 4:55

That's a wrap for this Quick Connect. I hope today's insights helped you move forward with more clarity and confidence. Do you have more questions? Keep them coming, send them in and I'll bring you the expert answers. You can send them in by using the link in the top of the description of this podcast episode or by emailing contact at endobatterycom or visiting the endobatterycom contact page. Until next time, keep feeling empowered through knowledge.