Sarah Petrov is a board-certified general and trauma surgeon and essayist whose work bridges the rigors of the operating room with the craft of clear prose. Raised in Seattle by Ukrainian immigrants, she earned her B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Washington and her M.D. from the same institution, completing surgical residency at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn and a fellowship in surgical critical care at the University of Minnesota.
From 2014 to 2016, Sarah served with Médecins Sans Frontières in Kenya and Nicaragua, experiences that reshaped her approach to consent, triage, and stewardship of energy in resource-limited settings. She has taught clinical reasoning and operative technique at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons since 2019, where she mentors residents on both craft and communication.
Her essays have appeared in Annals of Surgery, The Lancet, Tin House, and Bellevue Literary Review. She is the recipient of a Northwest Humanities Fellowship and has been a visiting writer at Hedgebrook. Outside the hospital, Sarah hikes long, wet trails, repairs her own bicycle, and lives in New York City with her partner and a retired greyhound named Suture.
