Match Day Profile - Spencer Scott
Spencer Scott, M21, aspiring surgeon, class president and Maine Track MD student
I started medical school when I was 27. After graduating from NYU, I worked in television journalism, starting at CNN for about four years, then bounced around a couple of smaller networks before moving to Boston from New York to work on a show called Boston Trauma for ABC. It’s essentially a docudrama series in hospitals, focused specifically on emergency and trauma medicine.
I got incredibly inspired by what I was seeing in places like Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Medical Center. I would be right next to the surgeon in the bays. It’s the closest “shadowing” experience you could hope to get, because you’re documenting what they’re doing.
One specific case I filmed, a young man in a motor vehicle collision came in the middle of the night with an aortic dissection. Essentially, this can compromise blood flow to the entire body. I filmed an endovascular aortic stent graft repair, and to see the repair complete in front of your eyes, I thought that was so amazing. It inspired me to consider this change, and now, every year has been better than the last.
I’ve been able to use my background in communication and love of writing as class president. Part of my role was to send out a weekly email highlighting exams, extracurriculars, and more administrative functions. But I tried to capture our experience, approaching it with a narrative format, sharing stories that would entertain classmates or commiserate about what we were all going through. I was lucky to get great responses—people would pull me aside and say they really appreciated my stories. I’m proud of that.
His match: Maine Medical Center. He says: “Now that we’re vaccinated, I had my closest friends from the past four years with me at my mom’s house in Cape Elizabeth. We watched the deans speak on Zoom and celebrated everyone’s great news with bagels and Bloody Marys. To be at home in Maine and get the news that I’m staying here in Maine was really special.”