Physics to Physician: A Spotlight on DCMS Member Dr. Stephen Arndt

Story by Lana Sumner-Borema, DCMS Intern

As an undergrad, Dr. Stephen Arndt was pretty sure that his doctorate would be in physics not medicine. He studied physics in undergrad with a double minor in chemistry and math, hoping to one day become a professor similar to the ones he had met at Wake Forest University.

However, with a physician father, the idea of medicine remained a constant.

“My dad is a gastroenterologist so I had always been exposed to medicine from a pretty young age and saw how it worked and what his practice was about. In college, I thought medicine was an option, but I always thought about becoming a college physics professor.”

He took a wide variety of science courses to meet his graduation requirements but clearly remembers hitting it off well with a physics professor and excelling in those classes.

“I really liked it, and it spiraled from there. I thought I would be biology on one end, some sort of science major. But physics was the one that I liked the most.”

However, after doing research with his professors, he started to recognize he might not want to get as far into the field as he originally thought.

“The experiments I did were in a quantum physics realm and my professor was really advanced. That’s when I kind of realized I wasn’t sure I had the chops for high-level physics. I did research with my math minor in a field called differential geometry, combining three-dimensional shapes. While it was interesting and cool, that’s when I realized the field was getting a little bit beyond me.”

Dr. Arndt continued on to Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine deciding to instead follow in his father’s footsteps and pursue medicine. Working now as an orthopedic surgeon, specializing in the foot and ankle, he sees his original major in undergrad having real-life significance.

“With orthopedics, there’s relatively higher-level or complex physics that exists. You won’t necessarily see it day-to-day, but in terms of biomaterials and force and things of that nature. I feel like the backdrop of physics has been very helpful in learning the biomechanics of the human body for sure.”

He’s also able to see advancements in his field in a more mathematical point of view. According to Arndt, finding a simpler way to work the problem saves a lot of time and energy akin to solving a problem in math or physical science when the revolutionary solutions are just simplified ways to solve complicated problems.

“Figuring out a way to do surgery that would minimize wound complications. Foot and ankle surgeries’ biggest complications are the wounds, inadequate blood flow, swelling, and the sensitivity of nerves in the foot and ankle are all potential complications. If you can minimize wound complications, skin complications, and swelling, you are on your way to having a very good outcome.”

According to Arndt, the secret to these wound complications is simply creating a smaller wound through minimally invasive surgery and the use of robotics.

“[We are] starting to do many things through very small incisions so we don’t have to make a big incision and open up the foot and ankle. The minimally invasive aspect, would minimize wound complications and I think robotics are another advancement in the future. Not necessarily robotics but computer-aided surgery where the cuts are precise and there are limits on where you can cut and put certain parameters on the precision of the cuts.”

Dr. Arndt and his family relocated to Jacksonville from Chicago in 2019, but the First Coast is actually quite familiar. Arndt completed his residency with the University of Florida - Jacksonville back in 2010. Several friends, still living in Jacksonville, encouraged him to join them at Southeast Orthopedics and by 2019, he was tired enough of the cold to make the move. Dr. Arndt now claims “I love Florida. I will never go back north again.”

It’s worked out, too, because his family loves it in the Bold City. They’ve been spending a lot of time on the water with a boat they purchased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I had a boat when I was in residency with two other buddies. It was a little 19’ bow rider and when I got back down here, I was living on the water and I had a wet foot.”

Dr. Arndt and his wife have four kids, two girls and two boys. Between the four of them, there are a lot of baseball and soccer games, and he and his wife spend most of their free time driving them from place to place. Many of their family vacations are planned around baseball tournaments, though Dr. Arndt hopes to soon incorporate some family trips for orthopedic volunteer work.

During his residency and after he finished, Dr. Arndt took two mission trips to Haiti to provide general orthopedic treatments.

“Even though orthopedists specialize, we still offer general orthopedic surgery. In Haiti, it was more revision-type treatments. Fractures that weren’t treated, displaced limbs that were never put back in place, all sticking in the orthopedic realm.”

Now with Dr. Arndt’s relocation to Florida and closer proximity to Haiti, he hopes to pick up where he left off and, this time, take his wife and children with him to share the experience. He may have left the world of quantum physics behind as an undergraduate, he now utilizes physics and medicine in a way that helps others locally and abroad.