Get to know Nancy Longfors, MD, a general surgeon with Sentara Surgery Specialists. Dr. Longfors shares her approach to patient care, her clinical interests in breast and minimally invasive surgery, and the importance of helping patients understand their options and feel confident in their surgical care.
I'm Doctor Longforce. I'm a general surgeon at Centera Surgery Specialists here in Virginia Beach. My mom was a nurse when I was growing up. Um, I have several aunts who are nurses as well, and so, um, I was always interested kind of in the medical field. Um, it's kind of a funny story how I ended up actually staying in pre-med and going to medical school. Um, I started in pre-med and thought, well, maybe I should do biomedical engineering, and I talked with my advisor in college about that, and he had the, the messiest desk you've ever seen. And he was looking around, oh, I think I have a brochure somewhere and ultimately he's like, I, I don't know, I can't find it. I was like, never mind, I'll just stay pre-med. So, so that's how I ended up going into medicine and staying in it. Also in college um I did kind of shadowing in different areas of the hospital and found that I spent more time extra time in the operating room observing cases. It was really neat. I saw the surgeon who had done my grandma's heart surgery. I saw him do heart surgery, so that I found really neat and that's actually you know how. I realized I was interested in surgery. Um, it's a little bit different. I thought I was going to be overseas for life doing medical missions and so I thought I think I should do family practice. And then when I did my family practice rotation, I realized that just wasn't a good fit for me and um you know really enjoyed surgery, so I went the surgical route instead. As a general surgeon, I do a wide variety of surgeries and so areas that I particularly enjoy breast surgery, so that would include like breast cancers, other noncancerous issues with the breast, and then I also enjoy doing robotics and so that includes surgeries like gallbladders, hernia surgery, and then some other additional surgeries. I want to provide care that would be the same for my family and my friends, so each patient is different and so it's more of an individualized approach to each patient and really just want to provide the best care that I can. So I think one of the funnest things or the newest innovations that I've been working with would be robotics. So, um, it wasn't around when I went through training or it was just starting to become popular, um, and so I trained actually after being out in practice, um, at Princess Anne we just got our robot two years ago and so we've really been, um, you know, increasing the robotics program here at Princess Anne. And so that I think is probably the one of the more exciting um aspects of general surgery. I think that we're able to do more robotically than we are laparoscopically and that's just truly a function of the the actual technology itself um and so if you think about laparoscopy you've got instruments that can do this. And with the robots you have this, but you can then also add the wrist function so now you can actually do more, um, whereas you wouldn't necessarily be able to approach some of those things laparoscopically. I enjoy spending time with family and friends. Um, that includes, you know, just being able to enjoy a good cup of coffee and conversation. Um, I enjoy grilling, cooking, traveling. I've been gardening this summer, so I have a lot of daylilies in particular that I've truly enjoyed seeing the, the beautiful colors as they bloom. One of the things that I enjoy the most is actually um just being involved with the patient and seeing the journey that they go through um you know with surgery oftentimes you know we're able to help people um and fix problems and that I find you know incredibly um rewarding you know especially when they've recovered and are on you know the other side of you know whatever the surgical issue was.
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