Dr. Reid Sheftall graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics at age 21.

 

 

At M.I.T., he rowed for the heavyweight crew, played attack for the lacrosse team and was number two singles for the men’s varsity tennis team. After graduation, Sheftall headed west to teach electricity and magnetism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. It was during this time that he decided to pursue a career in medicine. He returned to Boston and took a job on the graveyard shift as an emergency room orderly at the Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital while finishing his pre-med requirements.

Dr. Sheftall received his M.D. degree from the University of South Florida College of Medicine in 1988 and began his surgery training.

This took him to Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, California, Cleveland, Ohio and Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

After working as a private practice general surgeon for five years, Dr. Sheftall decided to move to a third world country to realize a dream he had had since his time as a pediatric burn reconstruction fellow in Los Angeles; namely to found a charity that would provide free reconstructive surgery to children who could not afford it. He moved to Cambodia in the year 2000 and founded the American Medical Center and Operation Kids.

As of 2012, over 200 operations have been performed by Dr. Sheftall on burned and disfigured children from Vietnam and Cambodia free of charge.