College is a time of discovery. As such, big changes – particularly when it comes to major – are pretty common. But despite their less-than-stellar reputation, a good number of major changes turn out for the best.
According to Penn State University’s The Mentor, author Barbara Kingsolver, Chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment Jeff Gaspin and famed agricultural scientist George Washington Carver, among others, are notable individuals who changed their majors and took their second-choice fields by storm. And now you can add another name to that list.
Meet Dr. Alan Nisbet, a top urologist in private practice with the Corpus Christi Urology Group who initially entered Texas A&M in College Station with the intention of majoring in chemical engineering.
“I was interested in chemistry and chemical engineering, so I thought I was going to work for a big oil company and make it big in the oil business,” Nisbet said. “But during my undergrad, I was just kind of getting by, and I didn’t know if that was really what I wanted to do with my life.”
Thanks to his father, a Corpus Christi ophthalmologist who’s still in practice after 35 years, Nisbet didn’t have to wait long to find his calling.
“My dad had me go to work with him one summer,” Nisbet said. “I got to work in the office with him and watch surgeries, and I thought that was pretty cool. Then I got a job at the trauma center at Memorial Medical of Nueces County (now Christus Spohn Memorial Medical Center), and I worked in the operating room from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. for a summer as an orderly. That’s when I really decided that medicine was a calling. After that, I worked hard and got into medical school at the UT Medical School at San Antonio.”
And since Nisbet’s grandfather “was the second ophthalmologist to practice in San Antonio back in the ‘30s and practiced there for 50 years until he died,” according to Nisbet, there’s clearly no business like the family business.
But the family ties don’t stop there, as Nisbet’s wife is an E.R. doctor. Since he and his wife have a 16-month-old daughter, however, working with two already packed schedules to find a balance between patients and personal lives isn’t always the easiest of tasks.
“Balancing work and time off is somewhat challenging,” Nisbet said, “but one of the advantages of being a urologist is that typically, we don’t have a lot of emergencies in that a lot of our patients can be scheduled rather than be done on an emergency basis. That’s a huge advantage. And the nice thing about my wife being an E.R. doctor is that she does what’s called shift work. She goes in at a certain time and leaves at a certain time. We can schedule childcare around that, so that is helpful.”
With a little teamwork, Nisbet and his wife find a great balance. This self-described “avid fisherman and outdoorsman” even finds time to enjoy his No. 1 hobby: saltwater fishing.
“I do all sorts of outdoor activities from hiking and running to surfing and mountain biking,” Nisbet said. “If you can do it outside, I probably do it or have enjoyed it at some time. But saltwater fishing is definitely one of my passions.”
Scheduling for doctors, of course, is difficult long before you earn the M.D. Medical school itself involves a ton of bookwork, and “when you’re in training, there are always very long hours, and you don’t have time to do much besides work,” Nisbet said. “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it teaches you to be focused and makes you work for what you want to do.”
Nisbet moved across the country to complete his training at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City and his fellowship in minimally invasive and laparoscopic surgery at the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in Los Angeles. For this Corpus Christi native, living in the Midwest and out West was – in both cases – quite a change.
“L.A. is crazy,” Nisbet said. “It’s a great city to live in and to visit, and there’s a lot of everything there, but it’s overcrowded. And Kansas City is a wonderful city, but it’s really cold in the winter. It’s a great place to live, [there are] wonderful schools and the people are friendly. But from about late October through about mid-May, it’s very cold.”
Corpus Christi, on the other hand, is the perfect balance, as far as Nisbet is concerned. Although returning to his hometown wasn’t necessarily part of the plan, “I realized that Corpus was a [nicely] sized city to practice in,” Nisbet said. “I didn’t feel it was too big or too small; it was the right size to have a hospital system big enough to support the technology and complex procedures that I specialize in, but it wasn’t a huge city like San Antonio, Houston or Dallas.”
When it comes to these “complex procedures,” Nisbet’s “real areas of expertise even within urology” are complex kidney stone surgery and laparoscopic robotic surgery, which he “would do all day every single day if it could be supported in this environment.”
In laparoscopic robotic surgery, the surgeon performs the procedure from a console with a T.V. screen, guiding the movements of two large, robotic arms that physically make the incisions.
“With laparoscopic robotic surgery, I’m able to treat patients with tiny incisions,” Nisbet said. “Ten or 15 years ago, the same procedures would’ve required a 10-inch incision. There’s a real satisfaction to be able to do an operation just through some poke holes and send your patient home with some Tylenol or some other pain pill a couple of days later. It really is truly amazing.”
According to Nisbet, this “awesome” technique results in “a one- to two-night hospital stay, a quarter of the blood loss, less incontinence and much less pain” in comparison to the traditional method. When you weigh this minimally invasive surgery against its painful, “morbid” alternative, it’s easy to see why it’s where “all of medicine – not just urology – is going.”
When you get Nisbet talking about urology, it’s clear he loves what he does. Of all the areas Nisbet could’ve pursued in and out of medical school, urology appealed to him most because “it’s a good mix of surgery and traditional internal medicine,” he said. “It offers both challenges: being able to think about problems dynamically and approach them either medically or surgically, as well as the ability to help people by doing complex surgeries. It’s also offered me the advantage of getting to know my patients, but being able to focus on one area rather than all of their medical problems. And even though it’s a very specialized field, it’s offered me a lot of opportunities.”
Amazingly enough, Nisbet became a urologist as a result of yet another academic change of mind.
“I actually went to medical school thinking I was going to be a trauma surgeon,” Nisbet said. “That’s when the influence of a man named Dr. Ian Thompson at UTSA made me decide to switch to urology. The No. 1 reason I’m a urologist is because of Dr. Thompson. He was probably the doctor [who] really got me excited about and interested in urology from the beginning.”
Thompson is one of three notable names who shaped Nisbet’s professional pursuits. Dr. Brantley Thrasher of the University of Kansas “taught me a lot of what I know about urological oncology and cancer,” and Dr. Gary Chen “was my mentor in California who taught me how to do complex laparoscopic urologic surgery,” Nisbet said.
In other words, Nisbet was in good company from day one. And he’s still in good company, as he shares his private practice with seven other top urologists whose ages span a range of 40 years at the Corpus Christi Urology Group.
“At 34, I’m the youngest one in the group,” Nisbet said. “The oldest one is 74. It’s a pretty broad age range. Even though we all practice general urology, we have a pretty diverse practice, and we sub-specialize a little bit within the group.”
When it comes to urology, “the road to get there is challenging and often comes with extensive personal sacrifice,” but for Nisbet, the payoff makes every overnighter and lost weekend worthwhile.
“The biggest reward for me is seeing my patients after I’ve done surgery or given them some sort of treatment, and they’re doing better,” Nisbet said. “The days they tell me, ‘doc, I feel better,’ or ‘doc, the kidney tumor you took out is gone, and there’s no evidence of cancer anywhere else,’ are the good days. That’s when I really feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. The ultimate payoff is knowing the patients are doing well, and that I’m doing a good job.”
For more information about the Corpus Christi Urology Group, visit www.corpuschristiurology.com.
