Harry Levine, MD, University of Michigan
Melissa Yuan, MD, Mass Eye and Ear
Dr. Tarek S. Hassan was introduced by Dr. Aristhomenis Thanos and Dr. Margaret Runner for the 2024 VBS Lifetime Achievement Award.
Drs. Thanos and Runner showed a video that encompassed Dr. Hassan’s early life and achievements. To recap, both of his parents were physicians, and his father is still practicing at age 88; as such, Dr. Hassan was surrounded by medicine his whole life. He spoke about how his parents were able to separate work from home despite being very busy professionally, which he has tried to emulate for his own children. We learned that Dr. Hassan’s parents completed medical school abroad in Egypt but did residency and PhDs in Houston (where Dr. Hassan was born). He did medical school and residency at the University of Michigan and vitreoretinal surgery fellowship at Associated Retinal Consultants, in Michigan.
Dr. Hassan’s first interaction with the field of retina was at age 11 when getting hit in the eye with a baseball. He had a retinal tear that was not treated, but had depressed exams up to weekly for a time. He insisted this was not what inspired him to ultimately choose retina and in fact during medical school, he thought he wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon because “he wanted to be the man” (which was quite fitting as the soundtrack to the opening video was “The Man”). After more exposure in that field, he later realized he did not want to have their lifestyle because he wanted to have a family and “be a part of his childrens’ lives” and found ophthalmology to be more compatible with his ambitions. Then, after choosing ophthalmology, Dr. Hassan knew that he “was never going to do anything except retina.” He described the field of retina as the ultimate defender of vision, saying “we’re the marines [of ophthalmology] – if we can’t fix it nobody can.” He talked about the impact that senior residents, fellows and faculty at different times during his residency program had on his decision and how he looked at them as role models, mentioning that he followed in the footsteps of one of his early mentors Dr. Mark Jonhson.
We then went through Dr. Hassan’s fellowship program decision making. He was contemplating between University of Iowa and ARC/Beaumont. When he went to interview at Iowa, it was the dead of winter, and he painted a stark picture of there being nobody in the entire terminal, snow on the ground, and an empty parking lot as he picked up his rental car – noting that he decided instantly he would be staying at ARC in Michigan. Reflecting on this, he aptly stated that “our experiences are so shaped by the events and people at times around what we do and when we do it. On another day, a nice sunny day, I might’ve gone to Iowa”.
Dr. Runner asked about Dr. Hassan’s experiences at ARC and the decision to stay there as faculty. Dr. Hassan spoke kindly of his mentors, remembering being “taught by giants in the field with the desire to contribute at a higher level”, and having found role models he knew he could pattern his career after. He then imparted the advice that the most important thing is to see in prospective partners and mentors qualities you think are important to you, elaborating that “you shouldn’t join someone because you think they’re funny or if they have a big boat they take you out on. You want to be with people who have the same values that you have, and who will encourage you to be the best version of you.” This led into a discussion on mentorship, and Dr. Hassan reported “having mentors is the best thing in the world” – naming many in his own group but also many others. He found mentors who were outside of his program, in fact finding these “too many to count” throughout retina because they were able to teach him other important lessons and because they represented values that were important to him. He reminded us that “you can learn from anybody.”
Switching gears from learning about Dr. Hassan as the mentee to when he became the mentor, we learned that he has trained over 59 clinical fellows and counting. He taught the audience about what is important to him in terms of mentoring others. “Being a good mentor requires you actually think about what you’re doing – it’s not about just living and hoping somebody will see you and learn from that.” It was clear that this was an issue near and dear to Dr. Hassan’s heart, as he described the books he has read on behavioral psychology and how to be great. He then shared three tips on mentoring:
- Don’t treat everyone the same because everyone is not the same, and your job is to figure out what they need. As an example, he referred to his former fellows on stage, Drs. Runner and Thanos, noting they both needed completely different things but were both amazing fellows. He also spoke about his 4 “completely different” children who needed different things to succeed. The youngest is starting medical school this year, while the other 3 did not pursue medicine.
- When you train someone, your instructions need to be very specific – you can’t teach somebody something if they don’t know what you’re trying to teach them. He gave an example of stating “move that cannula a millimeter down for [this reason]” as a way to give very specific instruction over general instruction.
- Practice like you play – “and this is true of every great musician, actor, athlete”. He reminded us that the lights should always be on, and gave the examples of Michael Jordan and Roger Federer practicing like they played.
Dr. Hassan also became more and more involved in leadership, taking roles across various societies and collaborating across the globe. He founded fellow’s forum in 2001, club vit in 1996, and served as president of ASRS 2016-2018, RWC 2019-2022, and RHOF 2020-2024. When asked about his motivation in founding these societies and joining leadership, he reflected that “the world has flattened, and there is so much potential to be great, but the opportunity to access information and to collaborate was weak and poor at the time when I was finishing fellowship.” As such, he wanted to fill the need to get people who “like each other and who like to work with each other and put them together”. He started club vit within a few years after graduation fellowship, and he recalled that meeting being similar to VBS in that it was family friendly and borne of a desire to put people together. Similarly, for fellows forum, he established that to unite fellows of a class at least for a weekend, given that everyone’s fellowship experiences are so different. This was just one of many examples of how Dr. Hassan has been able to think broadly to change the field.
Dr. Thanos remarked that Dr. Hassan has always been keen on surgical innovation and asked about the process of bringing something from the mind into the OR. This led Dr. Hassan to share that one of his greatest passions is to develop instruments and other intellectual properties. His advice was simple – that you have to start with a good idea, and most good ideas are “actually simpler than they seem; if you have to explain an idea for a long time, then it might not be a good idea after all.” For example, he elaborated that when developing new surgical instruments, their potential use in the OR has to be immediately apparent by the future intended users in order to be a potentially successful device.
Turning to current times, Dr. Hassan is now following a more pharmaceutical route, as he has acted as chief development officer since 2022. He has found this role refreshing, stating he enjoys seeing patients and being a retinal specialist “now more than ever because of the other things I am doing.” He explained that he took this role because he was feeling like doing the same thing every day was no longer challenging, though emphasized this was not “boredom”. He felt more that he wanted to learn something he did not already know and to keep on growing. This role has given Dr. Hassan an opportunity to “help people in a bigger way and on a larger scale,” and he has felt that he is learning a lot in industry.
As we began to close the session, Dr. Runner asked Dr. Hassan what he was most proud of, to which he responded “that’s really tough – you didn’t tell me you were gonna ask that!” After reflecting, and very much in line with what had already been shared, he felt that he was most proud about being able to help people, particularly trainees. “My interaction with trainees is the most gratifying thing I think I’ve done in my career – the ability to make friends among all of you – doing what I do, we’re bonded in a certain way, and we are in a great community – getting to know people deeply over the span of the career.” He is grateful to have helped people through publishing and science and certainly to be able to “help [his] patients in the broader sense” but felt more than anything he valued “spending quality time with [his] fellows and contributing to their careers in a meaningful way and seeing were they ended up and how successful they became”
Dr. Hassan closed by saying that he was so impressed by VBS and expressing his happiness and gratitude for the award.
Photos #1, 3, 4, 5, courtesy of Kevin Caldwell