A physician with a special name shares her family history + her passion for medicine
Patients tell Tanya Doctorian, MD she was born to be a doctor because it’s right in her name.
“I think every day I get a comment, ‘is that really your last name?’” Dr. Doctorian said. “At times showing my badge as proof, I say yes this is really my name.”
The advanced heart failure and transplant fellow at Tufts Medical Center explains that the name Doctorian is Armenian, meaning family of doctors. While she is the only physician in her immediate family, her great-great grandfather and his brother were medical doctors serving their communities in Armenia in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“My great-great grandfather died in 1915 and I graduated from medical school exactly 100 years later, embracing my family’s namesake,” she said.
She was inspired to pursue medicine at an early age to combine her fascination with science and her eagerness to serve her community in a professional capacity. Her name was a cherry on top.
You may find Dr. Doctorian in the Cardiac Care or Cardiomyopathy Unit where she is part of a team that treats complex heart failure patients. It’s a rewarding specialty where she builds longitudinal relationships with patients and their families, walking through their chronic illnesses together. It is also gratifying to see patients get a second chance at life following heart transplant or ventricular assist device (VAD) surgery.
She really enjoys her training here at Tufts MC, particularly working with inspiring attendings, supportive advanced practitioners and down-to-earth fellows. “It’s like a family,” she says.
Speaking of family, her husband Alec Kherlopian is also here at Tufts MC as a third-year cardiology fellow. They are expecting a child this spring.
Besides medicine, the Doctorian family is musically talented. She followed in her father’s footsteps by playing the piano.
Follow her on Twitter at @doctorpianist.
