Elizabeth Mittendorf’s first year in medical school didn’t bode well for a career as a doctor. During one of her early encounters with a patient, she fainted. And it wasn’t due to blood or gore.

It was the pain of a patient with a broken wrist.

“My face hit the counter, and I became the patient,’’ says Mittendorf, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor in Breast Surgical Oncology.

At the time, Mittendorf had been questioning...