While most days Dr. Hendrikus “Dutch” Vanderveldt is investigating pancreatic and gallbladder troubles for his patients at UT Southwestern’s Digestive and Liver Diseases Clinic, other days find him strapped into a fighter jet experiencing the crushing G-force of twice the speed of sound.

An Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern, he has served in the Air Force Reserve since 2008, including time at the cutting edge of aviation in the F-16C Fighting Falcon, capable of pulling turns at 9 Gs – which equates to nine times the force of gravity for its occupants.

Dr. Vanderveldt

Currently a Major in the Reserve, he serves as flight surgeon with the 482nd Fighter Wing based out of Homestead Air Reserve Base at the southern tip of Florida. He joined the Reserve as a 39-year-old Captain and twice deployed into action.

His first call-up in 2012 had Dr. Vanderveldt serving as Chief of Medical Services for the 559th CASF (Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility) at Lackland AFB’s Wilford Hall. “We took in returning wounded warriors, provided medical care, and moved them on to their final medical facilities in the states.”

His second deployment in 2014 took him to Bagram AFB in Afghanistan, where he led one of the medical clinics and volunteered at a hospital for civilians maintained by the base’s South Korean contingent. “We treated the native Afghan people, some of whom had hiked with their families for days through the mountains to get to us,” Dr. Vanderveldt said. “Sometimes we were the first doctors they had ever seen. It was an amazing experience which I will never forget.”

After several years in high finance, he switched careers to medicine. He earned his medical degree from East Tennessee State University’s James H. Quillen College of Medicine and was in the midst of his training when the 9/11 attacks took down the Twin Towers, crashed into the Pentagon, and launched the U.S. into military action.

“I wanted to serve and give something back, but felt I still had my training, residency, and fellowship to complete before I could do that.”

He completed fellowships with SUNY Health Sciences Center at Brooklyn and the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he also completed his internal medicine residency.

Maj. Vanderveldt

“It’s a challenging job, but incredibly rewarding,” Dr. Vanderveldt said. “High-functioning people at the top of their games oftentimes discount their symptoms and their sufferings. You have to have good personal skills in order to understand the impact of aeromedical stressors like altitude changes, G forces, and a host of unnatural things that occur in the air.

“Flying at high attitude by its very nature is an uncomfortable position for the human body to be in and it’s the flight surgeon’s job to ensure that aviators are ready and capable of doing the job well.”