Hi. I’m Dan Schwartz. I’m an orthopedic surgeon, specializing in shoulder surgery and practices at the Polyclinic. I grew up in a household where both my parents were physicians and I saw the impact that they could have on patient’s lives. I went to medical school in Chicago at Rush Medical School. And then I went back to Northwestern for my residency. It was there that I fell in love with shoulder surgery. I then went to France for a year and worked in France to do a fellowship. Then after that, I went to a American accredited fellowship. I then took a job in Seattle at the Northwest Hospital Medical Center, practiced there for about five to six years before the Polyclinic recruited me in 2018. I’ll see people basically ranging from 14 to 99 and they’ll have anything from trauma. So they broke something to torn tendons that need repairing like rotator cuff surgery or shoulder instability. If they dislocate their shoulder and they want their shoulder to stop dislocating and they will see me for surgical options. And I also treat arthritis. So I’ll talk to patients about types of joint replacements that I do around the shoulder. I always encourage patients to exhaust their non-operative treatment options. Maybe a cortisone injection, maybe not. Depending on what’s wrong. But in general, that should always be exhausted before we just start discussing surgical options. I was attracted to shoulder surgery by its complexity. I think that it is the more technically challenging surgery that is present in orthopedic surgery. And I wanted to do that and do it perfectly, or do it as almost perfectly as I can. And that’s what brought me into shoulder surgery, When I’m not working, I’m very much occupied with my three children. I have three boys that are very clustered around the same age and they pretty much drag me out of the house pretty quickly whenever I get there to do something. So that keeps me very occupied. And when I’m not doing that, I’m trying to enjoy some French wine and maybe some food.
