jordan-smith-anesthesiologist

Ask Jordan Smith Anesthesiologist, what he's proudest of and the answer isn't an award or a title. It's coming full circle from his own cancer experience to become a board-certified anesthesiologist. That sentence contains most of what there is to know about him, and the rest fills in around it. He was born in Boca Raton, Florida, and diagnosed with leukemia as a child. His route into medicine wasn't one he inherited. It was shaped by that childhood cancer diagnosis, which put him on the patient's side of the operating room long before he ever stood on the physician's side of it. The experience is the reason he became a physician, and the through line shows up in how he talks about his work and in where he has chosen to give his time. Long before medical school, he was already back in hospitals, this time helping. High school and college years found him volunteering for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, an organization devoted to blood cancer research, patient support, and advocacy. He'd survived the very disease he was volunteering against, which makes the connection personal. During college he volunteered with the Child Life Program at the University of Florida as well. Supporting pediatric patients and their families through hospitalization is what such programs do, along with helping children understand and cope with medical procedures. A former pediatric cancer patient volunteering there meant returning to that environment from the other side, and it happened years before he set foot in medical school. That history predates his clinical career and helps explain it. Working with cancer patients and hospitalized children filled his teenage and undergraduate years, well before any of it could count toward a medical school application. His undergraduate degrees are from the University of Florida. Medical school took him to Florida Atlantic University, where the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine awarded his MD.