We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matthew Schultzel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matthew below.

Matthew, appreciate you joining us today. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?

My name is Matthew Schultzel, DO. I am a surgeon here in the San Diego community. The focus of my practice is General Surgery, Colorectal Surgery, and Robotic Surgery. We take a particular interest in Colorectal Cancer care as I have direct experience with this disease. My eldest brother had colon cancer at 40 years old and had one of the earliest robotic surgeries performed to cure him. My grandmother also suffered from colon cancer and she ended up needing a colostomy. When a cancer patient visits our office, I see my grandmother and eldest brother in each patient. One of my patients whom I often think about is an unfortunate young woman with metastatic colon cancer to her liver. She is young with a college age son and a wonderful husband. This patient underwent months of chemotherapy and radiation therapy followed by surgery to remove her rectal cancer and liver cancer. She did well and was cured. Every visit her family would give me a hug, and at the end of the visit the patient would always inquire if I had eaten that day or taken a break for myself. Every visit she made it a point of making her culture’s food and fed my team. Unfortunately, her cancer returned to her liver. During our discussions regarding this, she said “Dr. Schultzel, I will fight as long as you fight, and since you never rest neither will I.”. Subsequently, her liver metastasis was treated and she is in full remission. I am blessed with the opportunity to meet with this patient a few times a year. Her son now seeks to become an anesthesiologist because he would like to work with me “curing patients like his Mom”. After each interaction with this family I usually find a quiet place in my office to take moment and shed a quiet tear. I am always impressed by the heart of this family and someday I look forward to working with her son.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Matthew Schultzel, DO. I am a surgeon here in the San Diego community. The focus of my practice is General Surgery, Colorectal Surgery, and Robotic Surgery.

I am a California native originally from the Bay Area. I went to earn my undergraduate degree at UCSD and fell in love with San Diego. My practice is a concierge style surgical practice. We focus on cutting edge technology solutions for today’s surgical diseases. We offer the best treatments with unrivaled great outcomes.

Our practice strives to provide excellent care for those suffering from numerous conditions such as hernia, colorectal cancers, diverticulitis, gallbladder complaints, hemorrhoids, as well many others conditions. We do the majority of our surgeries with the Davinci Robot and are the highest volume robotic surgery practice in San Diego County. Additionally, both myself and my partner Dr. Daniel Burgess have earned the title of “Master Robotic Surgeon”, but the Surgical Review Corporation.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My partner is Daniel Burgess, DO. He is a phenomenal robotic surgeon and great human being. He is kind, patient, and has strong surgical skills. I met Dan while I was a trainee. He was my medical students when I was a resident. He then became my junior resident when I was a senior resident. We were able to keep in touch during the remainder of his training as both good friends and colleagues. Dan is just like a brother to me and it is great to be able to work along side him in our busy surgical practice. I am proud to have been involved in his training as he has become an unrivaled robotic surgeon in our San Diego community.

Any advice for managing a team?

In order to manage a team and maintain high morale any business owner must invest in their team. As a physician, I only hire pre-medical/pre-physician assistant graduates. I know that I will only have these workers in my practice for a few years, as the hope is that they will go on to their next stage of graduate education. I am able to mentor these employees that work for me and really try hard to pay it forward. I look forward to someday working along side these folks as colleagues. Due to this our team has a sense of community, family, and a strong sense of teamwork. The employees are also very much interested in the work as it is good training for their next stage in life. I treat my staff like family and they really show strong work ethic and high quality of work because of the support from the top.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sdcolons.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matthewthesurgeon/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthewthesurgeon/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-schultzel-do-58952b129
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/matthew-m-schultzel-do-encinitas