Annual Publication 2025 FINAL 05292025 accessible - Flipbook - Page 27
TO EMERGENCY
“I am just so fortunate, just because of the fact that this
residency works out so well for my life and what I like to
do,” says Dr. Turner. “More so than I would’ve imagined.
So, it was kind of a lucky thing that happened to me.”
Lucky to go into emergency medicine? That might be hard
for some to understand. But, Dr. Turner explains it plainly.
“The things that I liked in surgery were more of the critical
aspect of taking care of sick patients. Procedures that
require, you know, more of an emergent type of action …
I didn’t really realize it while I was doing my surgery year,
but the things that I liked were more procedural based
rather than operational based.”
Not only that, but he discovered that he could go home and
just be home at the end of his day. Working emergency
medicine is more of a “shift work style.” That would be
much more di昀케cult in a surgery residency. When he
started in the emergency medicine residency, he had just
gotten married, and now he also has a 5-month-old. “I
love just being able to know what my schedule is going to
be and being able to be home and truly be home.”
Even handling emergencies, Dr. Turner has expressed
surprise at one thing during his residency at the school
of medicine: how involved the residents get with the
community.
What wasn’t surprising was the support of the graduate
medical education (GME) o昀케ce and the faculty and
attendings. Dr. Turner shares, “Dr. Berkeley [Ross Berkeley,
MD, professor, residency program director, and chair
of emergency medicine], in particular, I think that he’s
brilliant. He is very detailed, very thorough … he will teach
you a bunch of things that you didn’t think of including
… medical legal aspects of things, in addition to disease
processes that you might not have thought about.”
Dr. Turner continues, “And he always says, ‘Call me if you
need anything. Email me if you need anything.’ And it’s
true. He does mean that. He takes care of us very well.”
Likewise, GME and the school provide the use of “the
gym facility” at the Kirk Kerkorian Medical Education
Building (MEB), as well as “the building itself, to kind of
sit and study and have a quiet place,” says Dr. Turner. “We
have access to the library system online … and our food
stipend is fantastic.”
Still, working the emergency room at University Medical
Center (UMC), Nevada’s only Level I Trauma Center, has
its constant set of challenges. Not every patient will have
a good outcome. But, one lesson rises above all others
for Dr. Turner in his second year of his residency. “Just
treating everybody with respect and giving them some
dignity and … doing what’s right. That’s probably one of
the main things that I’ve learned.”
Dr. Turner adds, “That and being conscious of the things
that you order [i.e. tests] because you don’t necessarily
need to order this gigantic workup on everybody and
overburden, not only the hospital with doing things, but
then the patient later with trying to pay for it.”
Beyond residency, Dr. Turner would like to stay right where
he’s at, hopefully at UMC. “This is where I’m going to stay
when I’m done with residency. I just love this state.”
SUMMER 2025 MAGAZINE
27
PHOTO: JULIAN FOX
But, as often happens in life, the cards fell another
way, and eventually, Dr. Turner was accepted into the
emergency medicine residency program at the Kirk
Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV. He is currently a
second-year resident and thankful for the way the cards
were dealt.
“We do a lot of event medicine, so we work the EDC
[Electric Daisy Carnival] and the Vegas Golden Knights
hockey games … it was de昀椀nitely advertised as such, but
the amount of involvement we have [in the community]
was pretty surprising.”
ALEXANDER TURNER, MD
F
or Alexander Turner, MD, a little twist on
his path to neurosurgery actually became
a lucky break. After completing medical
school at the University of Nevada, Reno
School of Medicine, and a preliminary year
in surgery in Las Vegas, he then went into
the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP),
a process where eligible residents who have not matched
through the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP)
secure a residency in un昀椀lled programs. He got into an
opening in the Valley Health System, just so he could stay
in the realm of surgery.
