Orthopaedics, Stand-Up Comedy, and Rap, with special guest Kamran Hamid.

Kamran Hamid

MD, MPH

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Mohit Bhandari

FRCSC, PhD

Distinguished University Professor, Chair of Surgery, McMaster University

Marc Swiontkowski

MD, FAOA

Professor, University of Minnesota

A cold Canadian morning sets the stage for a wide-ranging portrait of Dr. Cameron Hamed, an orthopaedic surgeon whose parallel careers in standup and comedic rap challenge conventional professional scripts. He traces his creative “pivot” to an uncomfortable realization—he could ask patients what they did for fun, yet had no durable hobby himself—then uses a disastrous golf experiment to illustrate how identity and joy, not imitation, sustain a life in medicine. He compares the anxieties of early operating autonomy and early stage performance, arguing that preparation mitigates risk but uncertainty remains the central stressor; with experience, surgical nerves fade while the live audience still generates butterflies. The dialogue expands to professionalism, social media, mentorship, and storytelling as a core surgical competency, culminating in a preview of his memoir that “smuggles” business and economic lessons into lived clinical experience and reframes health-system dysfunction as a space for pragmatic optimism.