About Me

Howdy! I’m Rishi! 🙂

I’m the founder of RK.md, a small corner of the Internet dedicated to my musings on medicine, education, technology, and life. I consider myself to be simple, inquisitive, fiscally conservative, socially liberal, and the stereotypical nerd.

I’m a Harvard-trained, triple board-certified adult cardiothoracic anesthesiologist and intensivist. Additionally, I’m a testamur in critical care ultrasound awaiting final board certification in this discipline.

I enjoy mentoring aspiring healthcare providers to become insightful, hard-working, humble, and compassionate members of this profession. In my free time, I enjoy studying, teaching, programming, sports, investing, automotive engineering, and video games.

PURPOSE

The word “doctor” comes from “docere”, the Latin for “to teach.” From my days in grade school, I have always loved teaching. Something about the process of learning complex topics, distilling them down to the basics, and being able to educate others has become a source of joy in my life. I find myself learning things for the purpose of teaching – whether that’s distributing notes, procedural skills, drawing diagrams, or just providing advice about things which worked for me and mistakes I’ve made – I cannot see myself outside of an academic world. I hope this passion to educate others continues to fuel my own study habits, appreciation for other disciplines in healthcare, and overall improvement as a physician every single day.

Social media outlets like this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow me to use technology to spread my love of teaching. As a physician, I want to provide advice and reassure those on similar journeys while also curating and creating free, informative content for both the general public and trainees in healthcare.

EDUCATION

I graduated in three years from Katy Taylor High School (2002 – 2005) and also graduated summa cum laude in three years from Houston Baptist University (2005 – 2008) with two bachelor of science majors in chemistry and biochemistry molecular biology. After a gap year of teaching MCAT prep courses, I was accepted to my dream medical school, Baylor College of Medicine, and earned my doctor of medicine (MD) degree in spring 2013. I then completed my categorical anesthesiology residency at Baylor College of Medicine serving as chief resident in my final year (2013-2017). Afterwards, I went on to complete two clinical fellowships in critical care medicine and adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital – Harvard Medical School from 2017 – 2019.

TECH LIFE

As a child, my dad encouraged me to tear apart old computers he acquired, learn about the components, and understand how software interacted with hardware to accomplish amazing things. I started building computers at a very young age, but simply couldn’t afford the latest and greatest parts on the market. Nevertheless, the logical thought process of computing was incredibly appealing. Around the same time, I grew fond of automotive workings. I learned about the different parts in an internal combustion engine, how they interact, and how to troubleshoot problems.

The real springboard for my insatiable love of technology was when I learned about the Internet’s framework, protocols, DNS, servers, and building websites through PHP, HTML, and JavaScript in my early-mid teens. I branched out and did freelance projects, code contributions, dabbled in Java/Android programming, and learned how to apply my growing body of tech knowledge/skills to my career in healthcare. In the process, I also developed a free iOS echocardiography app called EchoTools.

GADGETS

In July 2019, I went with a pair of workstations – a custom gaming computer (Bahamut) that I built and an iMac Pro to meet my gaming and productivity needs, respectively. Prior to this, I built Orion, Zeratul, Overmind and Tassadar. There’s something very rewarding about building your own computer and seeing technology evolve each passing year! 🙂

MacBooks have served my mobile computing needs since 2008. I’m currently rocking a 2018 MacBook Pro 13″ for tasks that my iPad Pro cannot easily accomplish.

Titan is my storage repository running on a WD My Cloud EX4100 4-bay network attached storage (NAS). I’ve equipped this NAS with Western Digital Red Drives in RAID-10 configuration for redundancy and performance. I can remotely access my files, backup my computers, host websites, and stream multimedia to my Apple TV via Plex.

Dabbling in the Android tablet arena over many years, I never found the experience I was looking for. I purchased the iPad Pro in January 2017 with an Apple Pencil and ultimately upgraded to the 10.5″ iPad Pro in April 2018 with an Apple Smart Keyboard.

Apple then released an edge-to-edge “Face ID” version of the iPad Pro – I purchased the 11″ version with an Apple Pencil 2 and Smart Keyboard in November 2018. I upgraded to the Magic Keyboard in April 2020. This is my primary computer at work and a very helpful teaching tool.

After many years of being a die hard Android Nexus/Pixel user, I decided it was time to go with an iPhone to better unify my workflow across all devices since I don’t program Android apps anymore.  I purchased the iPhone X in December 2017.. After writing my first app and enjoying the seamless interplay with all of my mobile devices, I traded my iPhone X for an iPhone XS Max in October 2018.

Here are the other smartphones I’ve owned starting with the most recent: iPhone X, Google Pixel 2, Google Pixel (backup), Huawei Nexus 6P, Motorola Nexus 6, HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Droid Bionic, Apple iPhone 4, Motorola Droid X, Motorola Droid, BlackBerry Tour 9630, Samsung Omnia i910, LG Voyager VX-10000, Palm Treo 700w

I never thought I’d get into the smartwatch market, but after prices had dropped due to expanding consumer options, I purchased a Moto 360 with stainless steel band in April 2015. This was upgraded to a Samsung Gear S3 in November 2017 and upgraded again to an Apple Watch Series 3 with a silver Milanese loop band in February 2018. The Apple Watch offers an incredible suite of applications which interface very well with my day-to-day activities. Never before did I think a smartwatch would be so useful! I then upgraded to the Apple Watch Series 4 with black Milanese loop band in September 2018 and loved the larger screen size with room for complications in the corners.

I’m not a hardcore audiophile, but after buying these Bose QC 35 headphones in September 2016, I decided high-end, quality headphones were well worth the money!

I transitioned to Sony WH-1000XM2 wireless, noise-cancelling headphones in April 2018 and was very satisfied with the noise cancelling, superior audio quality, gesture controls, and companion app feature set! I then upgraded to the Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones in November 2018. A year later, I transitioned to the Bose 700 noise cancelling headphones and a custom AirPods Pro.

After having a BMW Z4 for just over 15 years and learning so much about automotive engineering by tinkering with its engine, suspension, electronics, battery, radiator, alternator, pumps, brakes, wheels, headlights, and interior, I transitioned to a Tesla Model 3 Performance the same day I started my job as an attending physician in October 2019. After driving an all-electric vehicle with so much technology, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the internal combustion engine.