This Is His Lane

Johns Hopkins emergency surgery chief Joseph Sakran, who was shot in the throat as a teenager, has become a leading gun-violence prevention advocate.

- Corey Mclaughlin

“DO YOU MIND IF I PUT ON SOME MUSIC?”

SAYS DR. JOSEPH SAKRAN, THE 42-YEAR-OLD DIRECTOR OF EMERGENCY GENERAL SURGERY AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL, WHILE STARING AT THE SCREEN OF HIS OFFICE COMPUTER AND CLICKING THROUGH A PANDORA CHANNEL FEATURING COUNTRY SONGS. SAKRAN ASKS IF I’VE HEARD THE NEW ZAC BROWN BAND TUNE YET. “IT’S SO GOOD,” HE SAYS, TELLING HIS COMPUTER TO PLAY “LEAVING LOVE BEHIND.” A FEW LINES SOUND ASIF THEY WERE WRITTEN JUST FOR HIM, ESPECIALLY THIS ONE: “. . . AND I MISSED MY SHOT AT DYING YOUNG, A LONG TIME AGO.”

We’re on the sixth floor of one of the hospital’s state-of-the-art towers in East Baltimore, and Sakran is just beginning a 24-hour on-call shift as late afternoon light angles through a small window behind him. Sporting standard blue operating room scrubs and a black goatee and glasses on a round face befitting a former high school offensive lineman, Sakran, one of the hospital’s top trauma surgeons, is being his usual polite and affable self in asking for permission. Spend a few minutes with him and you learn he’s the type who says hello to everyone he walks past in the hallway.

“It’s just how I was raised,” says Sakran, the son of a pair of hardworking Middle Eastern immigrants. He is also, according to those who work alongside him, the rare colleague who is completely approachable and as comfortable talking about last night’s television dramas with the office assistants (one favorite is The Wire-ish crime show Snowfall on FX) as he is commanding one of the nation’s busiest and bloodiest trauma bays. “It doesn’t matter how stressful that room is, how bad the situation is,” says Dr. Ryan Fransman, 31, a chief trauma surgery resident who trains under Sakran at Johns Hopkins, “you always feel like he’s in control.”