Lawrence Shuer, MD, is the son of a neurosurgeon, but his mother urged him to choose a less time-consuming medical specialty than his father’s. He would not. In this video, neurosurgeon Shuer explains why he stayed steadily focused on neurosurgery. Shuer, a neurosurgeon at Stanford since 1984, treats patients with brain tumors, spine tumors, intractable epilepsy, peripheral nerve disorders, congenital malformations of the brain, and degenerative spinal conditions.

Shuer talks in this video about what it was that helped him make his decision about his specialty, what it was like when his father came out of retirement to work at Stanford Health Care with his son, then, still a resident. He talks, too, about the special atmosphere at Stanford that drives its innovation and discovery.