LEWISBURG, WV (LOOTPRESS) – Brian Hall, D.O., discovered his interest in anatomical structures in early childhood. Before he ever set foot in a classroom, he was a voracious reader who would do deep dives on topics that piqued his interest by studying his family’s encyclopedia set.
“Encyclopedias were my introduction to the sciences,” said the WVSOM Class of 2026 graduate, who grew up in southeastern Virginia and Beckley, W.Va. “If you talk to my mom, she’ll tell you I came home disappointed from my first day in preschool and said I didn’t want to go back because my teacher didn’t know anything about human anatomy.”
Now, Hall is on his way to becoming a neurological surgeon — widely considered one of the most demanding medical specialties. After a rigorous seven-year residency at Riverside University Hospital in Moreno Valley, Calif., he will undergo additional training in a subspecialty fellowship leading to a career marked by long hours and high stakes. He plans to let his enthusiasm for his work guide him through those professional challenges.
“I love the hospital. I enjoy being around the people who work there. As a med student, even when I had to be at the hospital for upwards of two days consecutively, I was tired but I loved the environment and the work. So my strategy is to let my zeal for the specialty carry me through,” he said.
His father, Benjamen Hall, D.O., is a WVSOM Class of 2013 alumnus and an anesthesiologist turned occupational and preventive medicine specialist. Brian remembers playing on the parade field while his father was taking tests and attending classes. The elder Hall would study by coming home each day and telling his children about what he learned, which influenced Brian’s future immeasurably.
“I remember him talking one day about the immune system and foreign invaders to the body. I responded, ‘It’s almost like it’s all alive.’ He said, ‘Well, it is.’ And from there I was set. Every kid wants to be a superhero like his dad when he grows up, and I don’t think I ever outgrew that. When I got the phone call saying there was a spot for me at WVSOM, it was the easiest decision of my life,” Hall said.
His interest in neurosurgery was established years earlier, when he read Gifted Hands, the autobiography of Dr. Ben Carson, who led surgeons through the first separation of twins joined at the back of the head in the 1980s, decades before his 2016 presidential bid.
“His book opened my mind to the idea that surgery could be done within the brain, the seat of human consciousness and human experience,” Hall said. “That was a source of inspiration for me. Then, throughout medical school, I found myself continuing to fall in love with the physiology of the nervous system, and when I got into clinical rotations, every opportunity I had to be in the neurosurgical operating room pulled me in that direction.”
While on rotations at Charleston Area Medical Center, Hall worked with friends in their preclinical years to establish a WVSOM neurosurgery interest group.
“Neurosurgery demands a high degree of early research and early publications, and opportunities to work with attending physicians who wanted to get projects published were abundant,” he said. “It seemed natural to enlist interested students and plug them into as many attending physicians as I could to get the ball rolling.”
Hall’s research at WVSOM mostly focused on cervical spine and spinal cord compression from degenerative changes and tumors. Recently he has turned his attention toward vascular conditions — specifically, chronic subdural hematomas.
“I’m looking into describing the pathophysiology of the disease, which although it’s common, is not particularly well understood from a pathophysiologic basis,” he said. “From there, I’d like to springboard to analyzing risk factors and translating that into recommended intervention.”
He sees a parallel between his specialty and an avocation he devoted himself to as an undergraduate at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. — audio engineering, a passion that grew from his time playing bass in a band during high school. The band didn’t last, but income from Hall’s home recording studio paid for his MCAT and for his medical school applications. Finding solutions to neurological problems, he explained, requires creativity in the same way recording audio does.
“In a studio, you can’t put the same microphones in the same places and get the same quality each time, because every song is different and requires a unique, non-algorithmic approach. In medicine, many specialties have algorithms: There’s one for managing diabetes, there’s one for managing blood pressure. I wanted a specialty where, instead, I take the knowledge I’ve acquired and tailor it to what the patient needs. In neurosurgery, every spine is different, every brain tumor is different and the vascular anatomy of every person is different. It’s unique and fresh every time,” he said.
WVSOM gave Hall the support he needed to earn a match to one of medicine’s most competitive residency specialties — one with fewer than 300 positions nationwide each year. He said he owes his success to the school and the preceptors who worked with him.
“WVSOM made this possible, from the preclinical to the clinical faculty and everyone in between,” he said. “And moving from Lewisburg to Charleston, the WVSOM reputation followed me there. I had five attendings in my corner, picking me up when I fell, pushing me forward when I wanted to quit and serving as a wealth of information and advice. I couldn’t have asked for a better education.”
