World-renown genetic disease expert Dr. Polina Stepensky has an outstanding track record of success at Hadassah Hospital. In 25 years, she and her colleagues performed more than 4,000 bone marrow transplants. And her department has a 100% survival rate.
But for Dr. Stepensky, the director of the Bone Marrow Transplantation and Immunotherapy Department, treating patients is about more than science and numbers. It’s about helping people. If you take a peek at Dr. Stepensky’s phone, it's filled with photos of her patients. “They are like my children,” she says.
In "Destiny and Determination: Becoming a World-Renowned Genetic Disease Expert," the first episode of a brand-new season of the Hadassah On Call podcast, Dr. Stepensky opens up about her professional journey, saving dozens of Russian children with a rare disease and new technology to create genetically modified T-cells.
“It was not easy all the time, but I knew that I have to work hard," she says. “My target was to help people, to understand different diseases."