Dr. Eamon O'Reilly: Leveling Up with a Willingness to Fail

In this Leveling Up episode of the PRS Global Open Deep Cuts Podcast, Dr. Eamon O'Reilly talked about how his time in the navy defined his approach to being a surgeon, his belief in living a life of service, how to approach patients with that philosophy in mind and why it requires a degree of sacrifice, his three rules for the operating room, and how he was able to sustainably and reproducibly create a microsurgery service at the San Diego Naval Medical Center. He also discusses why the surgical system and infrastructure matters more than the surgeon, why the postoperative period needs to be a focal point of patient care, how he pulls off a 45 minute breast reduction safely, his experience setting up the gender affirmation surgery program in San Diego, how innovation requires a firm grasp of foundational principles and a willingness to fail, the three qualities he thinks make a good resident, and finally, his food adventures on the hospital ship Mercy.

Read a recent "PRS Global Open" article by Dr. O'Reilly and co-authors, "Donor Limb Functional Restoration via a Novel Clinical Care Pathway following Fibula Free Flap Harvest for Head and Neck Reconstruction": https://bit.ly/Fibula-FF-Care-OReilly.

Dr. Eamon O'Reilly is board certified general surgeon and plastic surgeon and an Associate professor at the University of Missouri division of Plastic Surgery. Dr. O'Reilly was born and raised in Anchorage Alaska and graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in Biochemistry, followed by medical school at the University of Washington, and a General Surgery residency at the Naval Medical Center San Diego. After spending a year with the US Navy, working as the only general surgeon in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he completed a plastic surgery fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He returned to the Naval Medical Center San Diego where he eventually served as the Department Head and the Plastic Surgery Consultant to the US Navy Surgeon General. He deployed overseas multiple times on the hospital ship USNS Mercy, and to Afghanistan NATO Role 3 Hospital in Kandahar. He recently joined the University of Missouri Division of Plastic Surgery where his practice focuses on complex microsurgical reconstruction including limb salvage and limb preservation, head and neck reconstruction, as well as breast and body aesthetic surgery.

Your host, Dr. Puru Nagarkar, is a board-certified plastic and hand surgeon, and Associate Professor of Plastic Surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

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