Ariana Faron

Social Media Manager TOS
San Luis Obispo, CA

I’m currently a 4th-year student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, studying biology and will be continuing my career at UCLA School of Dentistry in the Fall. Since the moment I decided to pursue a career in healthcare, specifically dentistry, I was met with remarks about an outdated statistic on dentist suicide rates. Although the comments scared me, they haven’t stopped me.

Last quarter I did an internship under Sam Slishman (TOS president) and learned about The Osler Symposia and the crisis of physician burnout that is significantly contributing to the growing shortage of doctors, and that physicians now have the highest suicide rate of any profession. Although passion for my chosen career lies in caring for patients, I keenly understand that’s not possible unless we prioritize caring for ourselves, too.

I am proud to be the first student member on TOS’s board. My hope for TOS is that it achieves its mission of enhancing the wellbeing of all clinicians for the ‘betterment of healthcare, society, and humanity.’