“Baking is a great parallel to surgery because I am also working with my hands,” said Josefina Farra, M.D. ’09, Resident ’14, Fellowship ’15. She was speaking of her role as an endocrine surgeon at UHealth – University of Miami Health System. But those same words could easily apply to her non-medical specialty — baking cakes, pies, cookies and other handmade treats.
The Miami native is the younger of two daughters born to parents who both immigrated to the city as youngsters. She became interested in medicine in high school after taking Advanced Placement biology and spending a summer shadowing a pediatric neurosurgeon. She’s still amazed that she had such an opportunity. “I was a 17-year-old in the OR watching brain surgery, and I was mesmerized,” she said. “It was my first exposure to the operating room, and I loved it.”
Dr. Farra furthered her health care career journey as a pre-med undergraduate at Duke University, followed by medical school at the Miller School, and a residency in general surgery and a fellowship in endocrine surgery at UM/Jackson Memorial Hospital. Today, she is an associate professor in the Division of Endocrine Surgery in the Miller School’s DeWitt Daughtry Family Department of Surgery. She has built an extremely busy clinical practice with one of the highest volumes of thyroid and parathyroid surgery in South Florida. She also devotes time to teaching and mentoring medical students and residents who wish to pursue a career in surgery.
“Baking is therapeutic for me. It’s meditative.”
“Initially, I never thought about becoming a surgeon,” Dr. Farra explained, until a third-year rotation in surgery once again made her feel at home in the operating room. She realized that her passion for precision would be a good fit with a surgical career.
“I liked having an influential, positive and immediate impact on patients’ outcomes, changing their lives from one day to the next,” she said. “For example, I can tell a patient with thyroid cancer, ‘We’re going to cure you.’ I love that I can do that.”
Growing up, Dr. Farra loved spending time the kitchen, watching and learning from her Venezuelan mother and grandmother, who were both “extraordinary cooks,” she said. “I remember during the holidays making hallacas, traditional Venezuelan tamales.”
Dr. Farra progressed from savory to sweet. She faithfully followed her family recipes for chocolate and pecan pies, watched food shows on TV and read cookbooks with an eye toward baking. “I started making more complex things, like a 40-layer chocolate crepe cake, merengue cakes and pavlovas,” she said.
Despite her busy work and life schedules — she and her husband are raising two young kids — Dr. Farra has found occasions to share her goodies with colleagues, such as making a Boston cream pie for an attending physician and batches of chocolate chip cookies for fellow residents. “Baking is therapeutic for me. It’s meditative,” she said.
Dr. Farra also appreciates the crossover from surgery and baking. “There are absolute parallels between the precise, technical aspects of both,” she said. “I want to make a cake look beautiful, just as I want a patient to have a positive outcome. And they each provide immediate gratification.”
