Uzm.Dr. Derya Can

Born in Istanbul in 1988, she completed her primary and secondary education in the same city. From 2002 to 2005, she attended Istanbul Atatürk Science High School as a boarding student. Always an adventurer since childhood, Derya believed that a standard medical school would not satisfy her, so she placed GATA Medical Faculty, a military school, at the top of her university preferences.

Her military medical adventure began in 2005 and continued with lots of action, including rifle and pistol shooting, and some crawling, culminating in her becoming a Second Lieutenant in 2011. Of course, her training did not end there; she completed one year of military training and courses in preparation for her service in the field, while also gearing up for the endless series of TUS exams. Despite successfully completing both the military training and TUS after a year, she headed to Bingöl for her mandatory service.

With the motto 'All of Turkey is ours,' she served the soldiers, gendarmes, and police at the Bingöl Garrison. But her adventures didn’t end there; not only did she take on the responsibility of treating all the units at the Bingöl Garrison, but she also fulfilled the duties of transporting patients and the wounded via ambulance helicopter. One hat was never enough for her.

In 2014, she returned to GATA to pursue her residency training in emergency medicine, having passed the TUS exam in 2012. Still, a life of inactivity was not for her. In 2016, while continuing her residency, she transitioned to the status of a military physician under the Ministry of Health. After obtaining her specialization in emergency medicine in 2019, she was assigned to Çubuk Halil Şıvgın State Hospital. It was there that she learned the value of a warm and positive hospital environment and the importance of staff.

Learning knows no age or limit, after all. After establishing a triage system in the emergency department at this hospital, she found that even the emergency department was no longer sufficient for her. As she pondered what else she could do, she encountered complementary and alternative medicine (GETAT) methods and pain treatment. Determined to start somewhere, she attended a prolotherapy course, and from that day on, she never left the world of prolotherapy. Fascinated by how it alleviates pain and heals patients, she found herself back at Gülhane, this time in the prolotherapy department.

Realizing that this was not a simple injection-and-go procedure but something she needed to delve into deeply, she spent nearly five years in the prolotherapy clinic, gaining experience with over 80,000 cases. Yet, this wasn’t enough; she also incorporated ozone therapy, mesotherapy, cupping, leech therapy, and IV detox treatments into her repertoire. And after all this, she decided it was time to embark on a new adventure by resigning from her duties at the Ministry of Health and the Gendarmerie General Command to open her own clinic. Her sole purpose was to demonstrate that prolotherapy is not only a treatment every pain patient should experience but also one that every physician specializing in pain management should add to their toolkit.