A Career Aligned With Patients’ Needs: Meet John Panzone ’21, M.D.
As a child growing up outside of Utica, New York, John Panzone ’21, M.D., knew that he wanted to dedicate his career to medicine. However, Panzone was not sure precisely what his role would be. It was during his time at Le Moyne, where he majored in biology and minored in chemistry, psychology and applied statistics, that discovered that becoming a doctor would provide him with the opportunity to make the kind of difference he truly wanted to make.
Today Panzone is an orthopedic surgery resident at the University of Rochester, and is looking forward to building a career in hand or spine surgery. It is a path that aligns closely with the Jesuit mission to care for the whole person. As Panzone has discovered, every patient is unique and a treatment plan can look very different, even for two people facing the same diagnosis. In order to provide his patients with the best possible care, Panzone must understand precisely what they are experiencing, how their diagnosis is impacting their quality of life on a daily basis, and what their goals are for the future.
Or, as he puts it, “People are not X-rays.”
What I’m most excited about is continuing to progress in my journey of healthcare. Residency is similar to the stages before it. You're constantly trying to push, to learn more, to advance what you're capable of doing. I feel like every day I'm in the hospital, I'm learning, whether that's from textbooks or from my colleagues and from senior residents and attending physicians.
Panzone credits his time at Le Moyne with preparing him for the work he is doing and will continue to do in the coming decades. The neurobiology course he took as an undergraduate was remarkably similar to one he took in medical school, and the physics course he completed proved to be extremely useful when he sat for the medical school admission test. Panzone says that the professors who led those classes not only knew his name, but were deeply invested in his success. They even provided him with the opportunity to act as a mock-patient for the College’s Physician Assistant Studies Program. In addition, he was involved in a number of activities out of the classroom, including the Pre-Health Society, Le Moyne Student Programming Board and Ignatian Ignite, that shaped the way he thinks about leadership and service today.
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At Le Moyne, preparing for a career in medicine goes beyond mastering science. It’s about learning to care for the whole person. Discover how our pre-health programs combine rigorous academics with a deep commitment to compassionate care.
