Have a response for Dr. Trisha Roy? Reply to this post directly — she’ll personally read every message. Also, let us know who we should feature next by replying directly to this post!
On/Offcall is the weekly dose of information and inspiration that every physician needs.
1. Trisha, what’s the hardest part about being a physician that you think should be talked about more openly? Medicine isn’t always curative. Limb preservation is a palliative specialty in many ways. You can do a technically successful procedure, and the patient may still ultimately lose their limb if their disease is too advanced. The emotional tension of balancing hope, realism, and responsibility can feel heavy and sometimes heart breaking. But that heartbreak also fuels my passion for research and innovation. It’s a constant reminder that we need better ways to understand disease and personalize treatments to make our interventions more durable and successful in the future.
2. Forget pizza parties — what’s one way you’ve coped with burnout that’s actually made a difference? Having a creative outlet. For me, that’s journaling, scrapbooking, photos, and intentionally celebrating the small victories that otherwise get lost in the chaos of clinical practice. In vascular surgery, and limb preservation in particular, you deal with a lot of failure – disease progression, failed procedures, systems issues, and patients that are too far gone by the time they reach you. If you focus too much on the losses, you can miss the fact that you are helping someone keep their independence, avoid amputation, or simply relieving their pain can matter enormously, even if it is temporary. I’m very intentional about celebrating the small victories along the way and it helps to keep things in perspective.

Send and receive referrals, build wealth, and grow your physician community with Offcall.
3. What is something you are currently working on that you hope will have a big impact on the practice of medicine? I’m working on advanced vascular imaging using MRI to better characterize individual patients’ blood vessels before intervention. Right now, many treatment decisions in peripheral arterial disease are still based primarily on how narrowed a vessel looks on angiography. But two blockages that look identical on an angiogram can behave completely differently during treatment because the underlying vessel biology and vessel composition are different.
The goal is to move toward more personalized treatment selection – understanding which lesions are likely to respond to endovascular therapy, which patients may do better with surgery, and how devices interact with specific vessel characteristics for more successful interventions in the future.
4. Who do you want to nominate next to get the next Physician Spotlight?? Dr. Laura Drudi, a vascular surgeon-scientist who has done incredible work on burnout and physician wellness while also building an impressive academic and research career. Her thoughtful insights really resonate with the next generation of physicians.

✓Complete quantitative breakdown of what physicians really think about AI
✓Strategic implications for healthcare organizations and AI companies
✓Sentiment analysis of physician attitudes about AI and the future
As a vascular surgeon-scientist at the Houston Methodist Hospital DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, my work spans multiple disciplines, including vascular surgery, materials engineering, wound care, and imaging science. My clinical focus on limb preservation and comprehensive care for patients with peripheral vascular disease (PVD).
See what your colleagues are saying and add your opinion.