There is a small pool of doctors in the United States who identify as Hispanic. In fact, only 12% of physicians are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Dr. Marco Rajo Andrade is part of that small pool. He's a Bariatric Surgeon at Advent Health Carrollwood.
It's here that he's connecting with the area's high Hispanic population and hoping to help.
But his story doesn't start here. It starts in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on his family's farm. A place he said he thought he would work.
Agriculture has been in the family for years and, in fact, still is today through his brothers.
But, when Marco was 13, a new dream started to emerge.
"There happens to be a small hospital there that medical-surgical brigades come to. And one summer, I happen to be at the farm, their interpreter fell through. And my father was like, 'Hey, why don't you go over there just to help them out?'" Dr. Andrade recalled. "But it turned out to be like, probably like one of the most life-changing experiences of my life."
Young Marco helped translate maybe 100 operations that week. From there, he worked in medical interpreting to help communicate between doctors, the surgical team and patients. He was even taught how to scrub in and got a first-hand look at what surgery is like.
"Up until that day, had you asked me what I was going to do with my life, it would have been one of two things. Either I was going to be a dairy rancher, like my dad, or I was going to be a vet," said Dr. Andrade.
Dr. Andrade went on to Louisiana for his undergraduate degree and medical school.
About three years ago, he ended up here in Carrollwood.
"But whenever I first got to Tampa, right, when I before I started my fellowship training, I drove around the city, right with my wife, and we went around, we looked at different places, etc, etc. But when we found out that like Carrollwood was an area that had such a high Hispanic population, and they had this super nice hospital in the area, I was like, I'm gonna work that one day. And then, you know, that was kind of like the end of that. But after a training, the opportunity actually presented itself that they were looking to build the Bariatric program at this hospital. And because of the patient population, and the fact that I happened to have this particular skill set, it really was a really nice match for me. So I couldn't be happier," said Dr. Andrade.
Dr. Andrade hopes to connect with patients and make them feel a little bit more comfortable.
"If you can picture yourself walking into a doctor's office, right? Especially a surgeon's office, where it's already a stressful, anxiety-provoking encounter, no matter what you're going in for, it could be a hernia, it could be a gallbladder, could be heart surgery, it doesn't matter, right? It's just, it's the idea of having surgery that's a stressful thing for people. And you walk in there, and your surgeon doesn't look like you. And he can't communicate with you directly. He can't speak with you. Right, that's a big thing for people. But then imagine walking into that same scenario, and you see somebody who looks like you, who speaks like you, who has similar customs to you, who understands the kinds of things that you're that are going to matter to you in your day-to-day life, that are going to make your recovery a little bit easier, or a little bit more challenging. I think that goes a long way. And it really helps people put people at ease," explained Dr. Andrade.
He hopes more people in the Hispanic community will think of medicine as a career opportunity.
"I hope that as people really get settled and they look at what their career opportunities are, I hope that they consider pursuing medicine as an option. There's plenty of folks who've, who've made that journey and who've emigrated to the United States as adults who are in the field of medicine before and, you know, the who are in the process of trying to get those degrees validated, so they can practice in the United States and human physiology and human physiology doesn't matter where you're learning. It's all the same on the inside. Right?" said Dr. Andrade.
