McGovern, the Next Generation: Casner Jablonski
There is a particular kind of risk involved in walking away from a life that is already working.
A steady career, an MBA, and a clear professional future are not easy things to leave behind. For Casner Jablonski, however, they eventually became part of a harder question: Was he doing the work he truly wanted to do?
Medicine had not been the plan.
Jablonski studied accounting and built a career in accounting and consulting. While earning his MBA, however, his career plans began to change as several members of his family dealt with chronic autoimmune disease. Standing beside them as they navigated the healthcare system, he saw how differently patients and families could experience medicine depending on the physician in front of them.
Some encounters were frustrating. Others brought clarity, compassion, and hope.
“I wanted to be that person for somebody else,” Jablonski said.
That thought followed him into an ordinary phone call with his mother as he drove home from work one day. They were discussing his day and the health challenges affecting their family when he told her he wished he could do more.
Then he realized that he could.
“I remember telling her that I just wished that I could do more to help everybody,” Jablonski said. “And then the thought just kind of popped into my head that I actually could be doing more.”
Recognizing what he wanted was one thing. Acting on it meant giving up the security he had spent years building. He would need to return to school, complete courses for medical school, and trade a steady paycheck for years of tuition and expenses.
There was also the knowledge that if medicine did not work out, returning to his previous career might not be simple.
“It doesn’t really look great if I try to go back,” he said. “So, I was taking a risk from that standpoint.”
The financial side of the decision could not be ignored, either. It was something he understood particularly well because of his background in accounting and business. Still, he decided the risk was worth taking.
“I get to go to school now every day and do something that I find incredibly profound,” Jablonski said. “It gives me the chance to, in the future, do something and help people in a meaningful way.”
Now that he has begun classes, Jablonski has found himself starting over in another way. He entered medical school with experience in accounting, consulting, and graduate business education. His classmates arrived with different backgrounds of their own.
Being surrounded by them has reminded him of something his father taught him long before medical school. A retired Marine Corps colonel, Jablonski said his father was the most hardworking and steadfast person he knew. He taught his son that he might not always be the most talented or knowledgeable person in the room, but he could always choose how hard he worked.
“I know that I’m probably not the smartest person in the room,” he said. “But I do have the ability to work a lot harder to try to match everybody else.”
Jablonski has carried another lesson from his previous career into medicine. Working in accounting and consulting meant dealing with complex problems and understanding that he would not always have every answer. He believes medicine requires some of that same humility.
“I don’t know everything,” he said. “What somebody is feeling or their perception is valid, and I shouldn’t just discredit that.”
For Jablonski, that is especially important when a patient is going through one of the most difficult periods of their life. He remembers what it was like to stand beside family members dealing with medical issues and how much difference the right physician can make.
He wants his patients to know they can depend on him in those moments.
“My ultimate goal is to become the kind of physician that patients and their families can trust during some of the most difficult moments of their lives,” Jablonski said.
Jablonski is currently interested in cardiology and endocrinology, specialties that appeal to him because of their physiology and his personal experiences, but he is also looking forward to exploring fields he has not previously encountered.
There is still plenty Jablonski does not know about what his career in medicine will eventually look like, but that uncertainty feels different now. He left a career where the road ahead was relatively easy to see for one where he is still discovering where he belongs.
But the thought that first surfaced during that phone call with his mother has an answer now.
He is doing more.