I had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing Dr. Avraham Schlager, MD, FACS, a renowned pediatric general surgeon at Palm Beach Children’s Hospital at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Dr. Schlager specializes in pediatric general surgery care, including advanced minimally invasive surgery, oncologic surgery for childhood malignancy, complex neonatal surgery with prenatal counseling, thyroid surgery, inflammatory bowel disease and pectus excavatum (Nuss procedure). He’s certified by the American Board of Surgery in Pediatric Surgery and General Surgery. Dr. Schlager is on-staff at Palm Beach Children’s Hospital and St. Mary’s Medical Center, as well as West Boca Medical Center in Boca Raton.
Dr. Schlager is also the proud father of three young girls, and resides with his children and wife in Boca Raton. To watch the video of our interview, click here.
Q: Why should a parent consider bringing their child to Palm Beach Children’s Hospital before anywhere else?
A: St. Mary’s has been known in Palm Beach County because of the incredible trauma services and the full adult care facility. The sickest pediatric patients throughout the county have always been transported to Palm Beach Children’s Hospital, and they have built their ability to take care of really sick patients as well as their ability to take care of all pediatric patients. Now Palm Beach Children’s Hospital has more than 30 pediatric specialists who are helping to establish it as the premier pediatric hospital in the county. They’re building upon the infrastructure that the hospital has already done such an incredible job of putting together.
Q: Palm Beach Children’s Hospital is known for excellent neonatal care. What can you add to its already-stellar reputation?
A: What’s unusual about pediatric surgery is that we manage problems from early childhood, whether it be neonatal problems that patients are often born with and sometimes even pre-natally diagnosed, to problems of adolescence. That can span a whole different array of diagnoses. Whether it be problems of newborn birth to inflammatory bowel disease and Crohn’s of adolescence. In there, we also manage pediatric oncology with childhood cancers and pediatric trauma as well. We end up being the final stop for all kinds of different problems that children encounter and we try to focus on doing it as minimally invasive as possible.
Q: Along those lines, what variety of treatments can parents expect from the hospital?
A: We deal with a whole array of different diagnoses — from pediatric trauma to pediatric cancers to pediatric digestive problems, all the way down to pediatric foreign bodies when a child swallows a coin. This hospital is the final stop for all kinds of unusual things that happen to children over the course of their childhood, so we try to keep up with the problems and develop new and innovative ways to manage the problems that we are seeing.
Q: What is one of the services offered at Palm Beach Children’s Hospital that you would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere?
A: One of the things that our surgical group offers is a real focus on minimally invasive. It really isn’t just one technique – it’s a generalized approach to how we care about pediatric patients. The simplest idea of it is that we do laparoscopic surgery, which means a surgery through a small incision using a camera to minimize the size and locations of the incisions. But that really is just the most obvious part. It actually starts with the initial office visit.
You try to be as minimally invasive as possible in the exam you perform, any testing that is done and any procedures in the office. You’re trying to make this the least traumatic experience as possible. You want it to be a positive experience, so the children develop a relationship and feel like they can trust their doctors. So it’s something you invest in from the first appointment onwards – to deliver excellent care over time.
Q: How are the physicians at Palm Beach Children’s Hospital helping to set a precedent?
A: What you get here that makes us stand out is that you don’t come and just see one physician. What you get is a pediatric service. When you come to see one of us, you’re getting the full level of coordination of care for whatever issue it is, and whoever else may be able to help to guide you through that issue.
What Palm Beach Children’s Hospital has become is a full 360 degrees service of care. From the personal to the technical to the follow-up, to the convenience. This hospital is establishing all aspects of highest quality care for pediatric patients.
Thank you to St. Mary’s Medical Center for sponsoring this blog post.