episode 7: rohan patel

February 2, 2021

I’ve thought about doing medicine since I was a kid. But I never really knew what ‘doing medicine’ meant. I just knew I wanted to help others. My family is very altruistic. My grandma was always giving back to the needy and my parents have done the same. My uncle, a physician, is involved in numerous community organizations that help those who are less fortunate. He is actually the reason I call Staten Island home. He moved from London when he was assigned to Staten Island for his residency. My mom, dad, two of my aunts, and two of my uncles followed him over. Most of us stayed down the street in the same neighborhood.

The summer before my freshman year in college, my uncle set me up with a shadowing experience in an internal medicine unit for me to better understand medicine. That experience really intrigued me. I saw how the attending interacted with the patients and how she asked questions. I loved seeing how it was like detective work. I’m a very curious person. When I have conversations with people I usually ask all the questions, which I thought made me the right type of person to become a physician. I love that you need to ask questions to try to figure out what’s going on. That’s one of the experiences that solidified my goal of going to medical school.

I’ve recognized that my growth has been linked to my environment. Going to NYU for college was a much bigger change than I expected and I experienced a little bit of culture shock, as strange as that might seem. Unlike the neighborhoods of New York that I knew, college wasn’t just people from the city; it was people from everywhere. Talking to classmates and my new friends helped me develop my world view, and it was the first time I realized how different my way of thinking can be from other people’s. Overall, college really helped me find my voice and clarify my goals. 

The second experience that confirmed my desire to be a physician wasn’t until my junior year of undergrad. I went on a medical brigade to Nicaragua for a week. We staffed a temporary clinic with doctors and dentists who provided care and students who provided health education. The clinic was located amongst farmland; the closest hospital was about an hour and a half away by car. That was my first experience with people who did not have any sort of regular access to medical care. Seeing patients in their thirties weighed down with a lot of health issues instilled in me the belief that preventative medicine is the best medicine. This experience also opened my eyes to see just how many problems there are for groups of people much less fortunate than I had previously understood, not just in certain countries but at home as well. I saw that the healthcare system those farmers were a part of wasn’t structured for these communities to be able to achieve long term health. I returned home with a genuine passion for medicine. 

I knew I wanted to take a gap year to immerse myself in the healthcare system. I joined a new care-team assistant program at Mount Sinai in NYC to help residents with administrative work. Every day was a mixture of calling pharmacies, processing prior authorizations, scheduling appointments, and coordinating with social workers. The hardest part of that job was going around encouraging nurses to join physicians on patient rounds. Learning to interact with them, some of whom had been working for over 20 years, while being a young professional myself, was definitely the step in my professional growth that I needed. Getting to work with patient’s families was also a very valuable experience. Seeing how much parents cared for their children drove home the importance of the work physicians take on. The work was very complicated and overwhelming at first, but I learned how to implement helpful changes. Once I found my niche, people knew what they could expect of me and the program was able to grow. 

Now that I know the role I will take in a healthcare team, I’m grateful for the experiences that showed me how to bring change to the practice of medicine. I hope to continue exploring different paths in medicine and I’m looking forward to positively impacting the communities I work in. 

What is your favorite thing to cook in the kitchen?

My parents made beans on toast (a dish they brought over from Britain) which I grew up on so I make that the most. I couldn’t cook before, but I’m trying to get into it now. I can cook salmon, a little chicken, pasta, nothing crazy.

Do you play any musical instruments?

I played clarinet 2 years in elementary school, I put it down at 10 years-old and never picked it up again. I played piano for 6 years and tried guitar but never got into it. But during quarantine I brought my keyboard down from the attic and started playing again. Apparently, I used to be a lot better than I thought I was.

Pick something or someone from NYMC to give a shout-out to!

Shout out to all the roomies: Amit, Hugh, and Roy. Also shout-out to apartment 1208 the OG homies. 

If someone wanted to talk to you, they should lead with:

Talk about anything! Just say Hi. I just want to know about people and am flexible with any conversation.