Meet 2025 MD graduate Peyton Seda

Hometown: Shueyville, Iowa 
Undergrad: Mount Mercy University 
Matched: General surgery, University of Iowa Health Care 

What drew you to a career in medicine? 

My mom is a nurse. That was where my first interest in medicine came from. I have also always loved science. Ever since I was little, I've just had a very strong desire to understand how the world works, and science was the way I made sense of that.  

I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I started at Mount Mercy. I knew I really liked biology, but I didn't know where that was going to take me. As I went through my first year of courses, I found that I really loved the intersection of science and the human condition. So, that kind of steered me towards medicine, too.  

I shadowed an orthopedic surgeon when I was in undergrad, and it was really that experience that confirmed it for me. I'm the kind of person that really has to experience something to fully commit. Once I had those shadowing experiences, I was like, “Yes, I could totally see myself doing something like this for my career.” 

Tell me about some of your mentors in medical school. 

I'm really fortunate that here at Iowa, we have a strong presence of women in our surgery program, in leadership, and among our residents. I feel I have great motivation and great people to look up to.  

Mala Sharma is a general surgery resident at Iowa. I remember talking to her when I was tossing and turning in my head about what I want to do for residency. At that point I had an interest in surgery but had a lot of self-doubt holding me back from making the full commitment. She said, “If you're worried about it because you think you can't do it, you can. You just can.” That was really meaningful for me to hear that from her.   

Outside of coursework, what was important to you in your time here? 

I was in a program called MECO [Medical Education Community Orientation]. It's something that you do between your first and second years of medical school. You go out into a community, and you get to work in the hospital in that community. For me, that was in Dubuque. I think that really developed my clinical skills. It helped give meaning to the things I was learning in lecture, because at the time, we weren't working in the hospital yet. The whole reason I got into medicine is because I care about people. I want to make people better. I want to understand what's going on and help them. MECO really helped make that connection, giving me an opportunity to go out in the community and see how doctors used that to help patients get better.  

It was on MECO that I first scrubbed into surgery. I remember feeling a sense of gratitude and honor for the patient in surgery. I get to learn from this patient, and that's such a wonderful and special patient-doctor relationship when you are trusted to operate on someone. You are operating on a part of their body they will never get to see! It was such a positive experience for me. 

Why did you choose your specialty? 

I shadowed an orthopedic surgeon and an anesthesiologist, and so I had an idea that I wanted to do something hands-on. But I also tried to keep an open mind. I just wanted to get through my core year before I really set in stone what I was going to do.  

During core year, I absolutely loved my general surgery rotation. I was on the emergency general surgery service, and it was very fast paced, which I loved. I felt like we were always making an impact. Wherever we went, we were helping people. At the end of every day, I felt so much satisfaction looking back and thinking about all the things that we had truly done for people. It made me feel like I was doing something good not just in the hospital but also for the community as a whole.  

I started doing more research in surgery, and that really helped me grow my interest as well. I'm a part of the Surgical Outcomes Group, which is working with Dr. Aziz [Hassan Aziz, MD], who's a transplant surgeon here. We do outcomes-based research looking at various factors that can improve outcomes for patients undergoing surgery. What makes this work especially meaningful to me is its direct impact on surgical practice and patient experience.    

What fond memories of medical school come to mind? 

Match Week and Match Day. All the medical students in our class had been doing our own thing the last couple of months while we were interviewing, so Match Week was the first time in a long time I had seen most of my fellow students. All of our hard work culminated in this fun event. Seeing where everybody was going and what they're doing, and celebrating everybody's hard work, was just so fun. 

What are you most excited for in residency? 

I'm excited for so many things. Continuing to make an impact in patients' lives and being able to make an even bigger impact. I'm excited to take that next step, and be more involved, and get even more satisfaction and joy from being able to help people.  

I'm also very excited to develop relationships and friendships with my co-residents. One of the reasons I wanted to stay at Iowa was because we just have an amazing group of residents. All of my rotations I've worked with just phenomenal people, and so I'm really excited get to know everybody even better. 

What advice would you give to a first-year medical student? 

Find your people. Find a group of friends that you will be able to lean on, and spend time with, and go through the highs and lows of medical school with. That has been the thing that had the most profound impact on my time in medical school: the friends that I've made and the connections. Those are the people who really lift you up when you're struggling in medical school, because it will happen. And they're also there to celebrate with you.