Career Pathways: Meet Anu Brixey MD, Assistant Professor of Radiology at Oregon Health and Sciences University

Please tell us a little about your current position.

I am an assistant professor of radiology at OHSU. My specialty is cardiothoracic radiology which means that I interpret imaging of the chest, and specifically the lungs and heart. 

What is your background and what brought you to Portland?

I grew up in Sacramento and attended college at the University of California, Berkeley.  I wanted to go to a medical school that valued education for education’s sake so I chose to attend the University of Chicago.  After graduation, I completed a 3-year internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital followed by a 3 year pulmonary/critical care fellowship at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. I practiced as an attending pulmonologist/intensivist for 4 years.  While I lived in Baltimore during my internship (2005), my husband and I took a two-week vacation where we drove down the coast from Seattle to San Francisco. It was during this trip that we fell in love with Oregon. We made it our goal at that time to one day move out to Oregon and we were eventually able to do so 7 years later. 

What influenced you to pursue a degree in science? Did you have any science role models?

My dad was an electrical engineer and my mom was a math professor, so I definitely had science role models and science in my blood! I liked the idea that if you sat down and worked hard at something, you could eventually figure it out (even if it entailed frustration or help). I was drawn to medicine by both my intrinsic love of science and logic combined with my love for helping others and wanting to really make a difference. I knew even at a young age that for me to have lifelong satisfaction, I was going to need a career where I felt like what I was doing was important. All of the years of tests, board exams, and studying was certainly worth it to get to the point I am at today. 

Tell us about your current role and what led you to this position. Did you switch career paths at any point?

After practicing as a pulmonary/critical care physician for 4 years, I made the very challenging decision to switch specialties completely (which is the equivalent of starting over in medicine).  Even though I knew the work I was doing as an intensivist was helping a lot of people and I loved my patients in my pulmonology clinic, it was the diagnosis of disease (rather than the treatment) that was always so fulfilling for me, perhaps because of the challenge involved in nailing down a diagnosis. Therefore, I quit my job and reapplied for residency in Diagnostic Radiology at OHSU. I completed a diagnostic radiology residency and cardiothoracic imaging fellowship at OHSU, after which I started a faculty position in the Department of Radiology, Section of Cardiothoracic Imaging at OHSU. As a cardiothoracic radiologist, I lean heavily on the clinical experience I have as a pulmonologist/intensivist so that when I am interpreting complex imaging I use my clinical background to form my hypothesis regarding the patient’s symptoms and combine this information with what I am seeing on their x-ray or CT scan to arrive at a diagnosis.  As there are only a handful of people in the country with this “double residency” experience, I feel like I am fulfilling my childhood goal of making a difference. 

What future goals do you have for your career?

I have several goals, but the biggest ones at present are as follows. Based on the tenet that “if you love your work, then it no longer becomes work”, my goal is to inspire a love of cardiothoracic radiology in people in training or pre-training such that they “fall in love” with cardiothoracic radiology and are excited to do their work every day. I am also passionate about women and girls pursuing radiology and other STEM careers. I recently gave a radiology lecture to my daughter’s elementary school. It was such an amazing feeling to hear one of the little girls say: “After your lecture, now I want to be a radiologist when I grow up”. I am the chair and co-founder of the Women in Radiology group at OHSU and one of our missions is to promote and recruit females into the field of radiology since there is a large gender disparity (50% of medical students are female, yet only 25-30% of radiology trainees are female). 

What are some challenges you faced along the way?

I think the biggest challenge I faced was being in a career where I wasn’t completely happy and having the courage to make the change.  I have a very supportive husband so that made a huge difference, but having two very young children during that time made it especially challenging.  Ultimately, I think believing in myself and knowing that I could do it and complete another residency made all the difference in the world. I think another big challenge was hearing people tell me what I should or shouldn’t do (based on their impressions of both my capabilities and that I was a young woman) and being able to filter out the negative energy without letting it affect me.  There will always be people who don’t believe in you and you have to remind yourself to rise above the chatter on the ground and to keep your vision and goals for yourself front and center in front of your eyes. 

Do you have any advice for women who are pursuing careers in science?

I think confidence is one of the most important qualities to possess when pursuing a career in science as a woman. If you are interested in or thinking about a career in science, you are already smart. Now you just have to believe it and make sure others believe it.  Speaking confidently and with conviction can change everything about whether someone views you as smart or qualified to be in a STEM career. My other piece of advice is to not pigeon-hole yourself into one career. Just because you are interested in running a biochemistry lab when you grow up doesn’t mean that you can’t take Drama classes part-time. I majored in Rhetoric (which is the art of persuasive argument) because I thought it sounded interesting, and it has served me more than my Molecular Biology major in my current career because I use my rhetoric knowledge to write persuasive papers and to compose clear lectures with appropriate oratorical skills. I also never thought I would be a radiologist when I grew up but I followed the opportunities as they came to me, and I’m extremely happy that I did.

What is a fun fact about you that not many people know?

I held a snake (Burmese python) when I was 21, went skydiving when I was 24, and went paragliding when I was 28, even though I hate snakes and am afraid of heights. Author BioKylia Ahuna is originally from Fort Collins, Colorado and moved to Portland in the fall of 2019. She received her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder and is currently a research assistant in a lab at Oregon Health and Sciences University. Kylia is also passionate about making research more accessible to the public and, as such, she is pursuing a graduate degree in Science Writing. She is excited to be a part of the Women in Science organization and looks forward to sharing stories of women in STEM fields through this blog series!