Meet Colleen Ryan, M.D.

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Colleen Ryan, M.D., Associate Surgeon and Researcher:

Hi there. I'm Dr. Colleen Ryan. I'm an associate surgeon here at Shriners Children's in Boston.

Fortunately, I had a mother who was a nurse. I came from a long line of nurses and she had a different idea. She says, "Well, why don't you try being a doctor?" And that sounded great to me. I came here and saw my first patient in December of 1989. The most important outcome that everyone was interested in was survival.

As I've grown older and as I've grown in my career, it wasn't just survival that I was interested in. It was in how these children did, and how they did as they grew older. And we delved into not just the physical outcomes, not just the family outcomes, but we've looked at the social outcomes, the psychological outcomes, the society outcomes, so that when a person comes to the clinic, we would be able to have them take a test and we could find out where they're lagging in their recovery and then provide a treatment and find out if it's improving.

In terms of research is unbelievable. If you have a question about any sort of thing, there's somewhere that you could ask somebody that is the world expert in it, right around the corner. You can bring that expertise to your clinical problem.

The patients that you have are wonderful. Every time that I've been in a difficult situation where things were really, really hard, one of these people has come back and said thank you. It's just the most remarkable thing.

This is my first job and I'm very fortunate to have it. I met my husband here. I've had my children here. I've lived my life here and I couldn't imagine going anywhere else.

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