People Profiles – Dr. Jason Crowner

For Jason Crowner, MD, (Vascular Surgery), his specialty is the perfect intersection of the things he likes most about being a physician: his patients and the opportunity for problem solving.

“Vascular surgery,” he explains, “usually has a couple different right answers to a problem. The key is to choose the one that works best for the patient. So, figuring that out with the patient is one of my favorite parts of my job.”

Dr. Crowner pursued medicine not only because he liked the idea of helping people but also because he found the biology and physiology of the body to be interesting and amazing. “The vascular system is fascinating—how our body works to get blood flow to places that don’t have it…how our body can adjust to vessels that become narrowed or obstructed­. When I learned about vascular surgery, all of this came together and just seemed to fit,” Dr. Crowner explains.

To learn more about the human body, Dr. Crowner performs clinical research on peripheral arterial disease and operative techniques for treatment. With the help of MedStar Health GME residents and fellows, as well as medical students, Dr. Crowner also studies how surgical education can be improved. For example, his team recently completed a project that assessed medical students’ opinions of surgery as a career and the factors that would encourage or discourage them from pursuing a career in surgery. Another study currently underway is a surgical simulation project that assesses multi-tasking and stress as it relates to surgical teaching. Through this study, his team hopes to determine how these factors influence the overall ability to train surgical residents.

Dr. Crowner says his partners and his chief have been instrumental in his own surgical career and his success at MedStar Health.

“Having people you work with who are there to back you up and help you out is vital.” To foster supportive relationships with peers and attendings, he offers the following advice to MedStar Health GME learners, “Be nice to everyone, and ask for help early.”

Dr. Crowner is originally from a small town in Illinois called Nauvoo. He attended Illinois State University for undergrad and Southern Illinois University for medical school before traveling to the University of North Carolina for surgical training. Eventually, he made his way to Baltimore, Maryland, where he now lives, to join MedStar Health. If Dr. Crowner had his way—namely if student loans didn’t exist(!)—he says, “I would be very tempted to live the ‘van life’ with my family and travel around the US/world.”