A Champion in Medicine

You think about the matches you didn’t win,” reflects former Mount Saint Joseph and University of Pennsylvania wrestler Andrew Gold ’04. Andrew was an All-American wrestler, two-time Maryland Independent Schools champion, and Division I recruit. As a senior at MSJ, he defeated four state champions and a state runner-up to secure a third-place finish in the National High School Seniors Wrestling Championships. But, when he thinks about his time on the mat, the competitor in him can’t help but replay the few matches that didn’t end with a triumphant fist in the air.

Today, Dr. Andrew Gold is a champion in a very different arena. As an anesthesiologist and critical care physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Andrew balances life-or-death decisions in the operating room with groundbreaking leadership in critical care education. Whether teaching the latest point-of-care ultrasound techniques to other doctors or keeping a liver transplant patient alive during an eight-hour surgery, his impact is as immediate as it is profound. He was named to the Philadelphia Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” list earlier this year. However, despite his immeasurable success, his competitor’s mindset is the same: “It’s the losses that stick with you.”

Andrew treats the hospital’s most critically ill patients in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and the Cardiothoracic Surgical ICU, but even so, he expects to get each one through. And many times, they do. “It’s always really encouraging when someone who was on a ventilator and different mechanical supports for months comes walking back into the unit to visit the staff,” he says.

Inspired by his mother, who was a nurse in a surgical center, Andrew knew from an early age that he wanted to be a doctor. A pivotal point in his journey to medical school was his decision to transfer from his public high school to Mount Saint Joseph as a junior. “There’s no way I would have ended up at Penn if it weren’t for Saint Joe,” he says. “I came to Saint Joe for wrestling but got a lot more out of the school than that. The community, the education there was just superior. I had great teachers that challenged me.”

In college, his mom introduced him to an anesthesiologist named Dr. Paul Park, who served as an early mentor for Andrew as he began to consider what path he may take. The applied physiology of the specialty intrigued him. “You make a medical decision and see immediate results,” he explains, “as opposed to physicians prescribing medication that could take weeks or months to see if it works. I like the fact that I get immediate feedback based on my therapeutic intervention.”

His interest in anesthesiology was confirmed on a medical mission trip to Kenya with Dr. Park and the Paul Chester Children’s Hope Foundation. They saw patients in a solar-powered clinic, performing minor operations and providing vital assistance to children and young adults who had otherwise limited access to such services.

Andrew met his wife Allison as an undergraduate student at Penn, where she attended the Wharton School. Her support throughout Andrew’s years in graduate school at Drexel University, medical school at the University of Maryland, and residency at Penn was crucial to his success. Knowing they wanted to raise their family in the Philadelphia area to be close to Allison’s parents, Andrew’s goal was to be hired at Penn following his residency. But in a frank conversation with his department chair, Andrew was told, “You can’t just be a good anesthesiologist and get hired. You need some sort of clinical niche.”

Andrew had been exposed to point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) in medical school and thought it had a lot of applications but knew there was no training for the procedure available at Penn at the time. “It’s the modern-day stethoscope,” Andrew explains. “It’s like an extension of the physical exam. You can look at the heart and lungs with ultrasound in real time and make clinical decisions off of it. The stethoscope is used for very specific things but rather than listening to your heart and making a diagnosis, POCUS allows us to look at things like how full it is, how it’s pumping.”

Andrew went back to his supervisor and pitched his idea. “What if I go out and get training in this modality and come back and be able to teach it to the faculty and the residents? Would that be considered a good clinical niche?” The answer: a resounding yes and a ticket to Chicago for training at the American College of Chest Physicians.

Andrew is board certified in both critical care ultrasound and transesophageal echocardiography. He has created an ultrasound education program that he teaches at the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the American Society of Anesthesiology conferences and in courses across the country. He was recently invited to teach a workshop at the International Liver Transplant Society meetings in Singapore this spring.

At Penn, Andrew is one of only eight anesthesiologists on the liver transplant team, which performs approximately 160-170 transplants per year, landing the hospital near the top of the list in highest volume for liver transplant centers. “Anesthesia for a liver transplant is much different than it is for other surgeries,” he explains. “I tell the residents, ‘It’s like flying. On a commercial flight, you’re always worried about the takeoff and the landing. But in the middle, it’s kind of like you’re on autopilot. Every once in a while, there may be some turbulence and they tell you to put your seatbelt on. That’s what the anesthesiologist is there for – those emergencies. But during a transplant, it’s more like being a fighter pilot. The easiest part is the takeoff and landing, but the whole time, there’s someone trying to shoot you down and you’re trying to keep the patient alive.’”

Andrew is not only a teacher to anesthesiology residents at the hospital, but he is also part of a mentorship program started by his former wrestling coach Roger Reina back when Andrew was a student athlete. Now on the other side, he gives back by meeting with Penn wrestlers on the pre-med track. He helps them consider summer internships, shadow opportunities, and which courses to take. “I’m just trying to help them however I can,” he says. “I feel very fortunate that I have had a lot of great mentors and people who taught me along the way.”

Andrew can see the Palestra, the home arena of the Penn Quakers’ wrestling team, from the hospital windows. Every so often, he’ll look out and recall the wins, the losses, and the moments between that made up his journey from a fierce competitor on the mat to a champion for his patients.