Grace under fire: Mesfin Shibeshi, D.O.
Whether jumping out of planes or treating trauma patients, Mesfin Shibeshi has it under control

By Mary Reed

From growing up in war-torn Ethiopia to scuba diving Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Mesfin Shibeshi, D.O., ('08), has a high tolerance for intensity and an appetite for challenge. But his life’s greatest excitement and satisfaction, he says, has come from practicing medicine.

“Training to be a doctor is still the most exciting and wonderful thing I’ve ever done,” says Shibeshi. “It is a great privilege to treat anybody.”

After graduation, Shibeshi began a residency in orthopedics at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Warren, Ohio. He plans to become an orthopedic surgeon—a natural continuation from his previous profession as a physical therapist—and work in a trauma center. The soft-spoken Shibeshi admits to enjoying the thrill of this medical specialty. “As much as I like the rush of adrenaline, I’m also calm enough to handle the crisis,” he says.

Shibeshi’s family knew crisis intimately in Ethiopia; his father and uncles were taken as political prisoners during Ethiopia’s civil war in the late 1970s and 1980s. But the adults never revealed their distress to the children, telling the kids instead that their fathers were away on business trips. “That took really, really, really hard work. So they are my heroes. They are not bitter people now,” Shibeshi says, crediting their resolve and his own to the family’s orthodox Christian faith.

“When they say God has a reason for everything, (my family) takes that to heart,” he says, noting that this is not a recipe for inaction in life. “I don’t stand there and hope and pray that things will be okay. I actually do my job, and trust that God will help me achieve the outcome.”

His job as a D.O. is to treat the whole patient, which took some adjusting after Ilodi’s nearly seven years working as a physical therapist. “In physical therapy, you have a hurt knee, you get treated for a hurt knee,” he says. “When I learned osteopathic manipulative therapy, on the other hand—it looks at the whole body. Why did this knee problem happen in the first place?”

Shibeshi’s ingrained passion for service led him to earn his D.O. degree—and will continue to direct his path. “I enjoyed helping underserved areas,” he says of both Southeastern Ohio and his native Ethiopia, where he hopes to return every few years to serve as an educator and volunteer physician.