Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
Ashish Sarangi is currently a fourth-year psychiatry resident and chief resident at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Texas. Having previous completed adult psychiatry residency training in Kingston, Jamaica, he has been fortunate to experience the field of psychiatry from different cultural viewpoints. He has gained experience practicing psychiatry in private practice, corporate hospitals and state psychiatric institutes. After graduating from the University of the West Indies Jamaica where he obtained his MD and residency in psychiatry, he has successfully transitioned to the United States healthcare system to pursue his second residency stint. He has been actively involved in helping reducing the stigma associated with mental illness in Jamaica by contributing to policy decision making by helping to draft the mental health act of Jamaica and also was an avid mental health columnist for the national newspaper during his time there. His work in Jamaica includes identifying human rights abuses in psychiatric practice and tweaking aspects of the assertive community treatment (ACT) in healthcare delivery. He has worked to connect medical students with fellow resident and physician colleagues in the care of patients and takes interest in teaching various aspects of psychiatry to different stakeholders in healthcare.
Dr. Sarangi was born in India and has been actively involved in promoting psychiatry amongst the international medical graduate population in the United States. He actively seeks out mentoring opportunities and guides international medical graduates and students towards developing an academic psychiatric career. He practices virtual interviewing and communication skills with medical graduates around the world which helps them better prepare for a career in psychiatry.
Dr. Sarangi’s research interests include Alzheimer’s dementia and geriatric depression. He plans to pursue a geriatric psychiatry fellowship upon the completion of his current training to be able to enhance his role as a clinical educator.
When the pandemic hit, many psychiatry departments across the United States had to rapidly adapt and respond in innovative ways to serve the needs of their patient population. After an initial struggle, many found a platform best-suited for this need and transitioned to telepsychiatry as a way to see and treat patients.
I first met Ruth in the emergency department when I was a third-year medical student on my psychiatry rotation. She was an “elderly female with psychosis — medical workup negative.” My resident had received a page with a request for her admission and sent me to the ED to speak with her first.
I am a 25-year-old resident physician of anesthesiology /
My sister and I are bonded by genetics, anatomy and biology /
I am a senior in high school at age 18. / My sister and I are bonded by love and everything in between.
For the first time in history, a pandemic has shut down the entire globe. COVID-19 has affected our lives in many ways, including significantly impacting health care services. Many people, sensing an unseen danger looming in the air, have become increasingly afraid to visit their primary care physicians, and we are now discovering the catastrophic consequences of this delay.
I constantly have to deal with racism and homophobia. In Boston. In America. When I leave work and go home, I have to prepare to deal with the same prejudices the following day. Why would I ever go out of my way to read such stories in my spare time, as I recover from the day behind me?
This elderly yet jolly gentleman answers our unending questions about his physical health, but it is his question to us that makes me pause. Do I have time for a poem? This busy clinic day, I stop reflecting on why his heart stopped beating and instead what motivates his heart to beat in the first place.
No one had told her how difficult the fight after COVID would be. Of course, few in her community had lived to tell the tale. And then again, precious few people had expected her to survive at the ripe old age of 86.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” Tightly holding the phone, I heard only an old man’s distant yelling and the shattering of dishes being thrown against the wall.
My husband Tom isn’t afraid of anything; strapping on a bulletproof vest every day for work will do that to a man. Tom wasn’t scared until I couldn’t breathe.
“The United States reports first death from COVID-19 in Washington State.” It was the end of February as I glanced over this news alert. For the past month, my inbox was flooded with emails regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. I saw my patients as usual throughout the day, albeit washing my hands and using hand sanitizers more often.
The nurses noticed the behavior first — how he answered for her, his arms on her shoulders, and, on the day of discharge, his refusal to leave her room to retrieve her medications. The labor & delivery floor was already in full swing when her nurse came over.
When I found out I was going to be deployed to treat patients with COVID, I dealt with a lot of existential dread. I remember feeling like I was leaving medicine behind when I matched to a psychiatry residency, and again after I finished the medicine portion of my intern year.
Resident Physician Contributing Writer
Downstate Health Sciences University
Alex is a PGY-2 psychiatry resident at Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, NY. He is an Alpha Omega Alpha member, a Gold Humanism Honor Society member, an APA Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow, and an amateur cover band musician. His writing can be found on Medium (@StillADoctor).
