Spotlight on Dr. Chang

I am a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist with subspecialty fellowship training in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery (aka Urogynecology), and I am thrilled to be in the DC metropolitan area as a part of the Advantia Health team. As a fellowship-trained urogynecologist in Advantia Health, I will aim to provide high-quality advanced medical and surgical pelvic floor care to the women of the region.

I owe an early interest in obstetrics and gynecology to my technical background. As a recovering engineer with degrees in chemical and biomedical engineering, I was drawn to the forward-thinking field of gynecologic surgery. My first residency experience with urogynecology came at the end of my PGY-2 year where I quickly discovered the innovation and creativity that permeated the field. Whether it was the elegant simplicity of a collapsible tampon pessary for urinary incontinence to the complexity of reestablishing pelvic support in a grand-multipara with complete procidentia, I was fascinated by not only the pathophysiologic processes, but also by the union of principles between medicine, surgery, physics, and engineering science that were so elegantly applied in improving women’s lives. Furthermore, I found satisfaction in providing the interventions that so greatly improved these women’s quality of life.

This passion for caring for people stemmed from my family and the way I was raised. Being a first-generation American born son of immigrants and seeing the struggles my parents went through made me very empathetic, and I was always raised with the sense that you should try to treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself. This embodies the root of my philosophy of care, in which I try my best to empathize with other human beings, with their suffering, joys, and motivations. I believe this results in the best kind of surgeon who is not only able to take the objective information into account, but also include compassion in their care. There is always the stereotype that surgeons don’t like to talk to their patients, but I take pride in the rapport I build with my patients and believe it is absolutely crucial to the process of arriving at a shared decision that will be maximally beneficial to the patients’ goals. In counseling patients, you will often hear me say “if you were my own family…” and that’s intentional; I want all patients to feel that they are a part of the family, and that they are treated like they are part of the family.

Now as a part of the Advantia Health family, my vision is that I can humbly grow this newly created division into a regional center of excellence for urogynecology. Although the DC-Maryland-Virginia region may seem like it has plenty of existing urogynecologists, there is data to support that the women of the area are still grossly underserved when it comes to their pelvic floor care. The goal of my practice is not to become a bigger name or practice than any of them. Instead, it is to provide a different option for care; one in which patients are given prompt access to evaluation and personalized evidence-based care in a comfortable private-practice environment. One effort to meet this goal is to integrate my practice into various Advantia offices to ease patient access, starting in Falls Church, VA, Silver Spring, MD, and Washington DC. As this division grows, I hope to consolidate care to a central office with intention to add the services of a minimally-invasive gynecologic surgeon, and eventually, more urogynecologists to the team as well. I am honored to have the opportunity and cannot wait to care for your patients within Advantia Health and beyond, and rest-assured, as a native of the DC region with deep ties to the area, I will be here to stay.