Graduate became first student in WVSOM's Research Scholar Elective

Graduate became first student in WVSOM's Research Scholar Elective

Mark Haft, D.O., spent the past year working 14-hour-plus days on research projects at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md., that provided him with opportunities to delve into the medical specialty that is his passion — orthopedic surgery.

“I’ve known since before medical school that I wanted to go into orthopedic surgery. I took three gap years between undergraduate school and medical school,” he said. “I was the chief scribe at an outpatient orthopedic surgery clinic for two of those years, and the doctors there were a big influence on me. Seeing the impact they made pushed me toward wanting to become an orthopedic surgeon.”

The Class of 2024 graduate was also drawn to the specialty because it allows him to utilize his hands, which he also worked with growing up.

“I had a lot of blue-collar, manual jobs. I like working with my hands and have done everything from pouring concrete to renovating homes. I also like that in orthopedic surgery you can see a variety of cases. In a given day you could treat a pediatric patient with a fracture and then treat an arthritic 97-year-old, and those populations and pathologies are very different,” the Baltimore native said. “I like to learn and I see this as a long-term challenge to stay up to date on my medical education. This is the only specialty where I’ve worked 12-to-16-hour days in the hospital and have still enjoyed every minute of it.”

Haft did not initially match to an orthopedic surgery residency, so he pivoted and capitalized on a new opportunity provided by WVSOM that would help secure more research opportunities in addition to increasing his chance of finding a career in orthopedics.

In June 2023, WVSOM’s Board of Governors approved a newly established Research Scholar Elective, a research-intensive course dedicated to providing medical students with an additional year to conduct research specific to their specialty of choice that would make them more competitive in the health care industry. Haft was the first-ever student to participate in the course.

“If you would have told me before that not matching to a residency would be a good thing, I probably would have just cried. But this has been a great year and I’ve learned and gained a lot from it,” he said. “It was awesome to have the support of WVSOM and work toward my goal. This course gives students in my situation another option. It’s ideal for students entering competitive specialties.”

The course was created for students who want or need a significant amount of research to achieve their professional goals. Students can take one year to work with research faculty at WVSOM or another affiliated school. Doing so will help build their curriculum vitae for their application to residency programs and build mentoring relationships with specialists in their field who can advance opportunities for them.

Linda Boyd, D.O., WVSOM’s chief academic officer, said while the Research Scholar Elective can be taken after students’ second or third year of medical school, it’s also an option for fourth-year students who don’t match.

“Medical students hoping to match in competitive specialties are under a lot of pressure not only to excel academically, but to accomplish a lot of research. Mark met all the qualifications but was short on research. He was the ideal candidate to spark the creation of the Research Scholar Elective,” Boyd said. “I am incredibly proud of Mark for his hard work and perseverance. He believed in himself, and with the extra year of research, he got into his first-choice residency program in orthopedics. We have two additional WVSOM students who have taken this elective so far and are hopeful they will also have a successful outcome for their residency match.”

During Haft’s time in the course through Johns Hopkins, he has had 12 research papers accepted for publication, and submitted about 30 more. One of his most interesting research findings deals with rotator cuff repairs.

“There is a patch made of pig tissue that doctors put on the rotator cuff to augment repairs and make it stronger. It’s very popular, makes orthopedic companies a lot of money and has been on the market for 10-plus years,” he said. “But there isn’t really any evidence that shows it works. We spent a year calling patients and getting follow-ups to conduct a retrospective cohort study of patients undergoing rotator cuff repair with this patch, and we found that not only does it not provide any clinical benefit, it may actually cause higher reoperation rates than doing a cuff repair with no patch. Projects like this may go against the grain, but I think it’s important to take a step back and see if what is being used actually works the way we hope it does.”

Haft’s research was recognized at WVSOM when he was selected as Student Researcher of the Year, which was presented at the school’s Graduation Awards Ceremony. That recognition made him eligible for the 2024 National Student Researcher of the Year Award, for which he received honorable mention through the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. Forty-one student applications from across the country were considered. He also received WVSOM’s Statewide Campus Outstanding Student Awards for his third- and fourth-year clinical rotations in the Central East region.

After spending countless hours evaluating the intricacies of orthopedic surgery, Haft is using that knowledge while completing an orthopedic surgery residency at Riverside University Health System in Riverside, Calif.

“My advice to those interested in becoming involved in research would be to find an area you are genuinely interested in,” he said. “The entire research process can seem daunting at first, but doing research on something you are passionate about will not only make learning easier, it will make you more productive in the long term.”