Physician Profile: Shelley Hall, M.D.

By Melanie Medina

When Shelley Hall, M.D., was heading to college, her pediatrician discouraged her from going into medicine. When she persisted, her pediatrician said that women only go into pediatrics or obstetrics and gynecology. So, when the New Englander was accepted to college at the University of Dallas, she packed two suitcases, hugged her mother and boarded a plane to Texas to pursue a medical career in pediatrics.

Big Texas hair and slow Southern drawls took some getting used to, but she loved getting into Dallas Cowboys’ games for free since she had been raised a big fan of “America’s Team.” During the fourth quarter, when the Cowboys were located at Texas Stadium, the team let students in at no cost.

When she wasn’t at games, she was studying to prepare for medicine and got accepted as an out-of-state student to The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. She developed her third-year rotation with one goal in mind: “I had planned them all around pediatrics,” she said. But when she was exposed to cardiology, and then to transplant cardiology, she took a hard left from pediatrics. Her new passion was congestive heart failure and transplantation.

“To me, it was the perfect combination of specialization and taking care of the entire patient,” said Dr. Hall, who is now chief of cardiac transplantation, congestive heart failure and mechanical circulatory support at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and associate professor at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine.

When she began her career at Baylor Dallas, Dr. Hall was the department’s first transplant cardiologist and one of only a few women in cardiology. Years later, more transplant cardiologists have joined the ranks of cardiology departments in the U.S., but not many of them are women. Although approximately half of all medical school graduates are women, fewer than 20 percent of cardiologists who see adult patients are women, according to an American College of Cardiology survey done in 2015.

As a transplant cardiologist, Dr. Hall knows all too well the sad reality of organ donation: there are far more people waiting for an organ than there are donors. A trial she is leading, though, may help increase the number of organs deemed healthy enough for transplantation.

Dr. Hall was selected as the principal investigator of a national study that will investigate whether a heart from a hepatitis C-positive donor can be transplanted into a patient. Potential donors, who historically were deemed ineligible because of the virus, can now be considered. Recipients receiving a heart from someone with hepatitis C can now be treated with a new class of antivirals that can cure the virus. Since several million people in the U.S. have hepatitis C, this can greatly increase the pool of potential donors. Currently, Dr. Hall is working to raise funding to support the trial.

People often think you’re a transplant surgeon, which isn’t the case. How do you explain the role of a transplant cardiologist?

I tell this to all my patients, because this happens every time. I say, “We take care of you, and keep you alive, until we get a potential heart. The surgeons do the surgery, and then we take care of you for the rest of your life.”

How is transplant medicine different than other subspecialties?

In transplant medicine, you can’t isolate yourself to just a single system. You have to take a holistic approach and incorporate infectious disease, general medicine, dermatology — you have to do everything. It’s a broad approach, yet it’s incredibly specialized at the same time. It’s the perfect blend of academic challenge and patient care.

What advice do you have for other women in your field?

Be prepared to always feel guilty. You are always going to feel like you’re not measuring up or doing enough. You’re going to feel guilty at work about not getting things done at home and for your kids. When you’re home, you’re going to feel guilty that you’re behind in your paperwork. Once you can accept that that’s the norm, then the big weight is off your shoulders.

It’s important that women understand they can be both an active mother and a full-time physician, but it is hard. It means you don’t have much of a personal life until you get older. I’m enjoying my empty nest now, except that I just filled it all with work. My husband and I are trying to figure out how to get that balance back. The only time I really relax is when we go to the beach in Mexico about four times a year.

Do you specifically seek out other women to hire?

You find the best person for the job. Of the nine [people on my team], three of them are women. I actually have a sort of United Nations going. Out of nine of us there are probably seven different countries, ethnicities and religions represented.

Tell readers a little bit about your family.

I have five kids, and they’re ages 19, 21, 23, 29 and 33. I couldn’t do carpool or be a room mom, but I managed three soccer teams and two hockey teams. I ran Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. I was home at 11 o’clock making cookies because we couldn’t do store-bought.

Now that they’re young adults, I’ve asked them if they feel like they were shortchanged. And they said no. They said they were really proud of me. That was nice to hear. I get more validation from my kids than I do from society.

What excites you about this trial you’re leading?

I’ve been fighting to list hepatitis C patients as donors for over a year. I was part of the national work group for the American Transplant Congress — and I represented cardiology, heart transplants — by stating that we should use these donors. We should obviously do it in a thoughtful, scientific way, but we should use these donors.

The challenge here is that the hepatitis C drugs are only approved for chronic hepatitis. The drug isn’t indicated for transplant recipients. And, therefore, insurance often will not cover it. We have the drugs donated by the company that makes them, but we’re still trying to raise funds for the cost of running the trial.

This article was originally published in the Winter 2017 issue of The Torch, a quarterly publication from the Baylor Scott & White Health Foundation-Dallas.