Bush Brothers carry on family tradition of Orthopaedic Medicine

From the October 2011 edition of Lewiston-Auburn Magazine.

Central Maine Orthopaedics (CMO) schedules over 40,000 appointments annually at their Auburn office on Minot Avenue, and many of those patients are going to be seen Dr. Jeffrey Bush or Dr. Matthew Bush. Yes, they are brothers. They even both started practicing at CMO on the same day back in August of 2006.

Matt Bush’s expertise is on upper extremities – the hand, wrist, and shoulder. He is one of the few surgeons in the state of Maine that performs reverse total shoulder joint replacement surgeries. After his undergraduate training at Dartmouth College, where he graduated with a BA in Chemistry, Cum Laude, Dr. Bush graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. He completed residency training at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York and in Providence at Rhode Island Hospital. Dr. Bush then completed a Fellowship in Hand and Upper Extremity surgery at Wake Forest University.

Jeff Bush is one of two doctors working for CMO that performs both total hip and knee joint replacements, and is also the medical director of the Orthopaedic Institute of Central Maine at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. A graduate from Jefferson Medical College, Dr. Bush completed UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Dr. Bush completed an internship in General Surgery and a Residency in Orthopaedic Surgery, then a Fellowship in Adult Reconstructive Surgery at Duke University Medical Center. Prior to his medical training, Dr. Bush graduated from Bucknell University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and from the University of Virginia with a Master of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering.

One piece of information that patients may not know is that the Bush brothers are carrying on a family tradition of medicine, as they are third generation orthopaedic surgeons. Their father, Dr. David C. Bush, was a hand surgeon at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania where Jeff and Matt grew up. Their grandfather, Dr. Leonard F. Bush, founded the orthopaedic department at Geisinger (which is named after him) where their father practiced until 2009.

“Our grandfather was an orthopaedic surgeon before there were orthopaedic residencies. He had done a general surgery residency, and at some point became interested in orthopaedics, and did a little bit of work in a lab at Columbia in New York. When he was working there, they were preserving bone, and actually started one of the first bone banks in America. He invented a new type of walking cast and some other things, at the time, to make significant contributions to orthopaedics.” explained Jeff.

“Quite frankly, looking back and reading some of the newspapers and publications, and seeing some of the work he did it is a bigger deal than I realized,” added Matt.

Growing up, their parents pressured the brothers, but not into medicine.

“I think we both had pressure to study hard and work hard in the classroom and be successful from that standpoint. In fact, there was a lot of pressure to do that, and that wasn’t necessarily directed towards orthopaedics,” said Jeff Bush.

“I think that we were fortunate to be in an environment growing up where our parents emphasized we could do whatever we wanted to do. What I think were the principles of hard work, and establishing the foundation of what was going to make you successful, no matter what you did,” said brother, Matt. “Being around my dad, I appreciated the fact that, growing up in a smaller town, he would interact with his patients in the community, and people looked up to him. I think he got a lot of satisfaction in taking care of people, and it was a neat environment to live and grow up in.”

Both Jeff and Matt eventually decided that they wanted careers in medicine. Jeff found a very early calling and was initially drawn to joint replacement.

“I spent some time in the OR with one of my father’s partners who did a lot of hip and knee replacements and subsequently experiencing some more of it in medical school, and then later in my residency, I was just drawn to that the whole time more than anything else I saw. I like trauma surgery, I love doing knee scopes and general procedures like that, but hip and knee replacements always seemed to suit me.”

Matt took some time before deciding that he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, focusing on the hand and other upper extremities.

“I wasn’t quite as convinced early on and wanted to explore other things. I decided to migrate towards hand surgery because of the diversity that it offers. I do a variety of procedures from nerve surgery repairs in the fingertip, to more involved shoulder replacement surgeries. My practice is pretty varied with respect to what I see and treat. My father was a hand surgeon, and he’s been a great resource for me. I call him all the time about injuries or complex cases. He’s an encyclopedia of knowledge with the background that he’s had.”

Soon after their training was complete, and they began looking for jobs, an opportunity arose in Auburn with CMO. Jeff Bush made the initial connection.

“We had a connection in this group (at CMO) in Dr. Lauren Adey who I had gone to medical school with. I started talking to Dr. Adey about an opportunity up here and we both looked at the same time.”

“It definitely wasn’t a scripted plan, but I think in the back of both of our heads we never talked about it until it became something that was possible,” added Matt. “Once we started looking at jobs together, we had opportunities to work all over the country, but once we had a couple of opportunities where we could work together, those kind of migrated to the forefront. We started to appreciate that it would be a lot of fun to work in a practice together.”

It has been a great experience for the Bush brothers, and part of that is due to the people that they serve.

“It’s been a rewarding place to practice because there’s quite a variety of patients, patients interests, patient ages, and a wide range of problems and challenges they come in with.  Patients seem to be happy in their environment and like the things they do, and I try to interact with them to learn about people and learn about Maine, because we didn’t grow up here, so we can learn a lot from our patients about the area, history, and culture, “says Matt.

“I have been really happy to take care of the people here. It’s more of a hard working environment, and I like that because it’s more like the town we grew up in,” says Jeff. “I’ve had a great relationship with my patients and it’s been very rewarding. I think Lewiston/Auburn sometimes gets a bad rap, but I think the positives here outweigh the negatives, and I believe my patients would agree with that.”