Surgeons have one of the notoriously more difficult jobs in medicine. The demanding job can be unpredictable and stressful. Constantly putting their patients first at the cost of their personal lives and being on-call means that they need to make sacrifices that many of us don’t even have to think about.

Dr Wael Alraiss is Kuwait’s leading consultant orthopedic surgeon and a master at helping injured athletes get back to their sport of choice. When you first enter the Orthopedic department in Taiba hospital, you are greeted with a wall lined with signed jerseys and other sport paraphernalia. Soccer, hockey and even motocross athletes have knocked on his door after serious injuries. And he is proud of the work that he has done. The shirts are not trophies, but they are a reminder of a long and successful, well-earned career.

For some people medicine is a calling, that they gravitate towards. As a teenager fresh out of highschool, Dr Wael wanted to study mechanical engineering. However, his father really wanted him to become a doctor and he had been accepted to Kuwait University’s College of Medicine.

After graduating in 1997 he started his residency where he had to rotate among different departments. After having some hands-on experience in the orthopedic department, it clicked and he was sure that this was what he wanted to do. In the early 2000s, he went to McMaster’s University in Canada to work towards his Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in Canada and is also a fellow of the Sport and Arthroplasty Fellowship.

But he has always been more than just a doctor, Dr Wael had also joined the military as a surgeon and worked his way up until he became the Head of Sports and Arthroplasty Unit in Jaber Alahmad Armed Forces Hospital.

He attributes his ability to stay calm under pressure and to work under immense stress to his time in the army. Even before the 2003 Iraq war, he was always on-call and had to spend weeks in the field whenever he was needed. He has since retired from the military and is only practicing medicine as a civilian now. The change of pace has been a blessing for him and has allowed him to focus on living more deliberately and mindfully. When we asked him if he was interested in learning something new, he said he would love to windsurf.

He’s now exclusively working at Taiba Hospital, which he says is just like family. Everyone at Taiba is exceptionally qualified. He really appreciates that the environment is collaborative instead of competitive and that all the doctors will put the health and wellbeing of their patients first and make sure they receive the best care.

Seeing a patient recover after an injury is why he wakes up in the morning every day. “I love seeing an older patient who can hardly walk from one room to another, being able to get up and move around after a joint replacement,” Dr Wael said. Improving people’s quality of life is what he wants to do.

But he also loves working with professional athletes. He is a master at knee injuries, which seem to plague soccer players more than most because of the nature of their job. The sportsmen are under a lot of pressure to quickly recover and return to the field with as little as possible downtime. His slogan is “you break it, I fix it”.

The doctor is quite popular on social media too, he has more than 20k followers on Instagram and 12k on twitter, but he is quite cautious about using his platforms to spread medical information. He believes that health education should be taken very seriously and that the information that people consume should only come from trustworthy sources.

When we asked Dr Wael what his advice for us would be for healthy bones, he said that in addition to good nutrition we all need to partake in regular low- impact activity and exercise to stay healthy. Good news for us, because anyone can manage a quick walk.

Follow Dr Wael Alraiss on Instagram and Twitter @waelalraiss. Taiba Hospital is located in Sabah Al Salem, off of route 30 on Road 3. Call them 24 hours at 180 80 88. For updates and information, visit their website at www.taibahospital.com, and follow them on Instagram @taibahospital.