Sharona Ben-Haim, MD, MSH ‘15 is currently an Assistant Professor, the Associate Residency Program Director, the Director of the Surgical Epilepsy Program, and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Officer in the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of California San Diego.
WHY MOUNT SINAI
Dr. Ben-Haim was attracted to the neurosurgery program at Mount Sinai because of the talented mentors, the great cohort of residents and the excellent location in NYC. During the interview, she had the sense that the department invests heavily in its residents and sets them up for success, which she found to be true throughout her training.
What Dr. Ben-Haim misses most about Sinai is her colleagues, friends, staff at the hospital, and of course, the food in NYC. She most values the superb technical training she achieved at Mount Sinai, with exposure to a wide variety of complex neurosurgical cases, as well as the mentorship from the faculty and leadership of the department.
Career After Sinai
Dr. Ben-Haim is an academic functional neurosurgeon whose practice focuses on advanced surgery for the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy, deep-brain stimulation for movement disorders, and surgery for chronic pain, including facial pain. She studies cerebral networks of pain processing using advanced intracranial neurophysiology. She has recently received funding for this and other work through a $12.25 million NIH grant and additional grants. Neurosurgery for the treatment of chronic pain is an evolving field, and she is dedicated to improving our current surgical outcomes and advancing the field with refinement in the use of our existing tools. She was elected as a member-at-large of the Executive Committee of the AANS/CNS Section on Pain, and continues to be actively involved in the American Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery (ASSFN).
She has also been elected to the leadership of the Women in Neurosurgery committee (WINS) as the Secretary of the committee, and is slated to be Chair in 2022-23. WINS is an important organization dedicated to advancing gender equity in neurosurgery and to educate and inspire future generations of neurosurgeons.
The COVID crisis has changed certain aspects of Dr. Ben-Haim’s job as well. Working in San Diego she has encountered circumstances over this past year where elective patients could not be admitted for surgery because of bed and/or staff shortage. She notes that COVID has affected all of our personal lives with continued formal or informal restrictions with travel, meetings, and daily activities. This is a global health problem, and she believes we need to work together cooperatively, thinking of the bigger picture in order to improve our predicament.
Advice to Current Students
Dr. Ben-Haim encourages current students and trainees to spend some time thinking about their career goals 5, 10, and 20 years down the line, and to thoughtfully identify barriers and find solutions to overcome them. She encourages students to not be dissuaded by perceived obstacles in pursuing lofty goals, “They are often much more attainable then you think.”