Friday 10 August 2018

The Beginnings

So, it's been a week since I started work and life in Bangalore.
I just finished my exams of fellowship in HIV medicine and people ask me, what next? It's everyone's favourite question, including myself.
The very reason I joined that fellowship was because it was offered at a great organisation, "Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement" which mainly works for the tribal health, education and socio-economic empowerment. I chose to work at Vivekananda Memorial Hospital because I could learn both clinical medicine and community health as the hospital integrates community health, preventive medicine in day to day patient care. Also as a step towards a career in public health I felt and was told by one of my mentors Dr Sumanth MM, it would be a good place to learn from, to build better attitude and contacts of course.
I'm proud of making the decision as it gave me a different perspective of public health. It taught me that public health is not a different domain in health but is an integral part of praticing medicine even if it's done at a clinic. It gave me an opportunity to learn the social, cultural aspects of illness, and how to spontaineously think about them while caring for your patient even during a busy OPD like Dr Seetharam, the orthopedician and President of SVYM does.

During the fellowship, we had many case presentations and a few journal presentations. On one such days we were introduced to Dr Ramakrishna Prasad and his team about which my friend Dr Akshay has written with much clarity here. I should again be grateful to SVYM because it attracts such wonderful people to the organisation. He has now become my mentor.

So with his mentorship, I've joined as a Clinical Research Fellow at NCBS, Bangalore under an Indo-African Initiative. So RK thought I would be a right choice for this work as I had showed up to a "Health Researchers' meet" at NCBS which was conducted as a step towards working in collaboration and not silos in research field. Like they say "80% of success comes by just showing up". I could learn about this meet only because of another mentor who I value Dr Ananth Kumar who was attending this as well.

I've also joined his team - PCMH-Restore Health as a clinician/HIV consultant where I'll be able to care for patients too.

So what's the kind of work I do everyday? Why did I choose it? 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment