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 currently an adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology fellow, ICU attending, and board certified anesthesiologist at Brigham & Women’s Hospital – Harvard Medical School. 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.

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.

We’ve all had influential educators in our lives who showed patience when we were unsteady, guidance when we were lost, and supportive reassurance when we failed. Using these traits, I ultimately want to apply my knowledge base and skillset to teach approaches to care for the critically ill in the intensive care unit (ICU) and operating room. Furthermore, I want to emphasize the importance of patient safety and quality improvement using technology and humanism.

One can either be miserable learning material for an exam or learn the same material for teaching and patient care. I’ve found the latter to be a much more fruitful endeavor. 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 informative content for both the general public and trainees in healthcare.

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 and a 4.0 overall GPA. Here are some of my collegiate activities/accolades: Alpha Epsilon Delta (Chapter President and Webmaster), Alpha Phi Omega (Mr. APO), Alpha Chi Honor Society, Omicron Delta Kappa Honorary Leadership Society, Society of Physics Students, South Asian Student Association, Student Foundation

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After a gap year of teaching MCAT preparatory courses, I was accepted to my dream medical school, Baylor College of Medicine, and earned my doctor of medicine (MD) degree in spring 2013. Here are some of my med school activities/accolades: Admissions Committee Student Co-Chair, Surgical Corps Co-Founder, Emergency Medicine Interest Group, Student Research Society, Gold Humanism Society Member

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I then matched to my first choice of categorical anesthesiology residency and stayed at Baylor College of Medicine from 2013 – 2017. My residency activities/accolades included: Chief anesthesiology resident, Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists, Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, Top 10% ABA Basic Exam, Gertie Marx Award (outstanding performance in obstetric anesthesia), Robert D. Dripps Memorial Award (outstanding graduate resident in anesthesiology)

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In April 2016, I accepted an out-of-match offer from Brigham & Women’s Hospital – Harvard Medical School to complete a dual fellowship in critical care medicine and adult cardiothoracic anesthesiology beginning in July 2017. I became a board certified anesthesiologist on March 8, 2018 and completed my ICU fellowship on July 8th, 2018.

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As a child, I remember my dad bringing home all sorts of old computer parts from work. He encouraged me to tear them apart, 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.

I built Orion in July 2018 as the successor to Zeratul, Overmind and Tassadar. I wanted to build a powerful yet compact workstation using the ITX form factor with support for high definition gaming, parallel processing, video rendering, and server storage. Orion runs the latest version of MacOS and lets me seamlessly balance productivity, gaming, entertainment, and everything in between.

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Rigel is a 2018 MacBook Pro 13″ I purchased in July 2018 (upgraded from a 2017 MacBook Pro) used for power and an application suite that my tablet cannot provide. Although I’ll never purchase an Apple desktop, I have to give props to their notebook line. They’re elegant, reliable, and very consumer friendly! I plan to stick to MacBooks for the foreseeable future, since I’ll always have my desktop for more intense tasks.

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Dabbling in the Android tablet arena over many years, I never found the experience I was looking for. It was time to expand my realm of mobile platforms to include iOS, so 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. It’s definitely my go-to at work or while studying.

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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 and anticipate with this new form factor, several iterations of iOS will be needed before the user interface is comparable the current standard iPhone experience. Here are the other smartphones I’ve owned starting with the most recent: 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

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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 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! 🙂

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Music is such an important part of my life. I’m always listening to something while studying, on my commute to work, at the gym, and even around the apartment. For years I opted for cheap, in-ear buds which kept falling out, hurt after continued use, and in retrospect, had horrible sound quality. 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 have been very satisfied with the noise cancelling, superior audio quality, gesture controls, and companion app feature set!

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This BMW Z4 is a toy I’ve owned longer than anything else on this list, and through the years, I’ve tinkered with its engine, suspension, electronics, battery, radiator, alternator, pumps, brakes, wheels, headlights, and interior to expand my knowledge about cars by living as a pseudo-mechanic. It’s also one of my primary outlets of stress relief after a long shift. Here are some posts with tweaks to the car. (link here)