Education, Understanding, and Mentorship: The Rise of an Oncology Icon

Sanjay K. Juneja, MD, a hematologist and medical oncologist, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Targeted Oncology’s first 2024 Oncology Icon, delves into his background and what drove him to pursue a career in oncology.

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0:09 | I am Sanjay Juneja. I am a practicing hematologist and medical oncologist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My wife and I both actually practice heme/onc together, down in Louisiana. The thing that made me want to be an oncologist most was the teaching aspect. I wanted to be a teacher for much of my life until I got into a bad car accident. It is a whole story, but I was able to appreciate that there is every bit of teaching when it comes to medicine; that is where the term doctor originated, in Latin. So, I enjoyed that process and I do believe that with education and learning and understanding, things become less scary. That was the case for me when I lost my eyesight. I would have been pretty terrified in high school if I did not know what the goals were. That experience made me realize that cancer is obviously a scary process, but if we can make anything more tolerable, education might be that.

1:14 | I am actually a full thoroughbred of LSU, Louisiana State University [LSU]. I went to undergrad at LSU, I was president of the basic sciences college. That kind of opened up the leadership stuff. Then I went to LSU medical school in Shreveport, was the president of the medical school there, and then I went to residency in internal medicine at LSU Health, internal medicine residency in Shreveport, and then I went to fellowship at Feist-Weiller Cancer Center in Shreveport, Louisiana.

1:47 | In respect to oncology, there was a doctor who just passed away, Dr. Jay Marion, MD. He was very compassion driven. He accounted for those elements that may not be in a billing code and kind of the structure of stuff that you learn about in the books, but he had a humanistic approach. He opened up my eyes at a formative time on the empathy and being inside the minds of the patients we treat, the family members, and using a lot of discernment on every word you use, and how you phrase them. I think that was pretty foundational.