Innovators & Influencers Honoree Dr. Ravi Kasi – Member May 2024 Special Episode

Welcome to Advancing PM&R, a podcast from the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, with a special episode from the Inclusion and Engagement Committee for Member May. Hi everyone, welcome to this special episode of Advancing PM&R, highlighting one of this year's wonderful innovators and influencers' honorees. I'm Michael Yokoz and Chief Medical Officer at Shepard Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and member of the Inclusion and Engagement Committee, and today I have Dr. Ravi Kasi with me. Ravi is the residency program director and associate professor at Rush University Medical Center PM&R program. He is a proponent of mentorship and igniting passion and understanding PM&R to medical students across the country. Welcome Ravi. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Ravi, tell us a little bit about yourself and your current role as a program director. Awesome. A little bit about myself. I've born and raised in Chicago, haven't left. I finished my residency at Rush, and I've stayed here ever since, and got involved with the residency early on, mainly because the residence all knew me from residency having been completed just recently. And my main role right now, of course, is to be a coach and a teacher, being a lifelong sports fan in Chicago, the greatest sports teams in the world. I got a lot of great life lessons from the great coaches and teachers that I saw on the sports field, so I try my best to implement that into the way that I coach and teach the residents. And we've had a great experience being able to see them all grow from really wide-eyed medical students into these amazing, amazing physicians that are doing much, much better than what I'm doing clinically, which is always the greatest compliment and the greatest joy that you get when all your residents do much better than you. I certainly understand that. So you have a lot of sports interests, but that doesn't sound like that's necessarily how you got into the field of PM&R directly. So tell us a little bit about how you learned about PM&R and what got you interested in it. Gosh, it was all about sports when I started, but man, I'm farther, the farthest away you could be from sports as a clinician. I learned about PMR because I thought I was going to be an orthopedic surgeon, but one day I looked at what was going on in my transcript to be very honest with you, and I just really not made the best decisions in med school in terms of extracurriculars, grades, step scores, the whole works. And I remember going to see someone that was supposed to advise me and they didn't give me news that was really great. I mean, they were like, it would be lucky if you matched into anything at all. I don't want to disparage any specialties that they named, but PM&R wasn't even one of them. And I remember going to another mentor about, you know, a week later and this person named Dr. Zarr, he's still at UIC, a fantastic clinician, and he goes, you know, you really need to figure out what you're interested in and don't let other people tell you what you can't do. If you really want to do something, and I told them about PMR and sports and orthopedics, he's like, go for it. And so the first thing I did is I walked outside and I saw this big sign that said rush. And UIC didn't have a PMR program at that time and I said, you know what, I'm going to email someone at rush and I happened to email the program coordinator for PMR. And I said, let me just try to figure out what this field is because I really didn't know what it was other than maybe some sports medicine for the non-orthopod. And I met my mentor, Dr. James Young, on the first day, and he was just the best mentor you could have. He said, come on through as much as you want. And so I discovered PMR by shadowing him on my post call days as a MS3. And I always tell students, there's no excuse, it was post call day, but I said I was going to go there because I wanted to be a PMR doc. And I learned all about the inpatient rehab, outpatient rehab. And then of course, the most important thing that they did for me was him and his residents who ended up being some of my future colleagues told me about all the ways that I could get my CV to be better so that I could be a future physiatrist. And so that was my story. Sounds like you've had some great mentors which have really helped you get to where you are today. So I certainly understand your desire to help other medical students find their way along as well. How did you actually start mentoring students? So some of the mentoring that happened was just natural. You know, I'm an academic medical center and we get students that show up on our front door with a note on their pocket that says, I'm interested in PMR, please help me. And what we discovered was that people didn't know what our field was, which is a common story that every physiatrist that mentors people will tell you about. And what we found was that there was not only our medical school, rush university, it was UIC and a lot of the other Chicago and medical school didn't have enough exposure that would make us as physiatrist leaders to be all that happy. And so what we ended up doing was working with the medical schools, sent out a bunch of emails and said, hey, if anyone's interested in PMR, don't wait until the last month before interviews or before applications are due, let us know early. And so we developed this medical student fellowship program, which has been running for a gosh, seven, eight years. And the purpose of the program is to one, mentor the students as early as possible, but all the things that they need to do to get into PMR and to make sure that they truly do want to do PMR, give a monthly lectures, get their extra curricular activities coordinated. And the beauty of it is to create leadership opportunities. So in the olden days, it was me doing all the legwork with the coordination of all the activities and now we have small subgroups with leaders where the students are setting up all the race medicine events, the adaptive sports events, scholarly activities. You name it. They come up with a great idea. And I'm like, that sounds cool because we've got a ton of students that are happy to help them. And it's been a journey going from that first student that didn't know what they're doing to now having too many students that I sometimes really feel bad that I can't mentor them one on one as well as I would like to do. I sure wish you were around when I was a medical student. They knew your students nationally. How many states are you seeing students from? Is it literally all over the country or subset? Yeah, it's interesting. It's always different states. I mean, we've had people from Indiana, Michigan, New York. We have a big group in Florida where they want to have like a Florida chapter that we were just talking about that where they kind of participate, but doing their activities locally at California. We had students from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and some students from South America because it was Zoom. I like to think I'm not a pioneer of Zoom, but I made it a point that we had WebEx and Zoom before the pandemic. So I was very comfortable transitioning when we had to go virtual. That's great. What do you find helps motivate the medical students most when it comes to learning about PM&R? You know, I would say students don't need much motivation because they have the fear of not matching. I think that is so pervasive in medical school that they will do anything that you ask them to do if you know, to match. And what the biggest thing that I try to tell medical students nowadays is that you want to be more process oriented rather than results oriented because most of the students that I meet, they're extraordinary. I mean, they're doing all these things that may be so lucky that I actually match into PMR. And so the motivation goes towards match, match, match, match rather than stating, what are you doing during this journey that one you're enjoying because wellness is such an important piece of this whole journey now and forever? And two, what are you learning about yourself in terms of how you actually learn what makes you happy as a clinician, which of these activities give you personal fulfillment? And for me, I really try to focus in on that part of their journey. I like to say rather than their motivation, because when they become residents and that bubble that builds up of needing to match gets burst, that was their motivation bubble. So now where are they? You know, what are they doing as a PTY2 on a random Tuesday where I told them, you know, it would be great if you read this article and they're like, I'd like to go to the Cubs game today, you know? And how do you find that balance in the grand scheme of things, you know, and finding that happiness? And that journey starts early. That's great. It must be really so rewarding, as you said, to be working with them so intimately in this early stage of their career. Are you seeing any trends in the students that you're mentoring? I think the students are getting smarter and smarter. Just in terms of the way that we've matched, we've had to do less work for the residents than we did many years ago, not to say that my residents were bad before because they might listen to this and punch me in the face when they see me at the APMR. But I think they're just a lot better prepared. They know a lot more using social media about what things they need to do to get themselves prepared for PMR. They're also able to cultivate their interest a little bit better because they'll say, oh, I listened to this podcast, not just YouTube video. I heard about this program and that program and there's a lot more of that, even though they're situated in a certain city, there's a lot more of a community that they've created themselves and it's so extraordinary. And obviously, the students that you're working with are coming to you because they already have that interest. But do you get the sense from talking with them that there was a growing interest in PMR over the past few years? Are they talking about more of their classmates being interested in it? Absolutely. I feel like the number of students that are coming out of each one of these schools in the Chicago Land area is just a small sample size is growing. And more people know more in depth about the field. It's not just, hey, I heard about this field. It's, hey, I'd like to come here and do a fellowship in X, Y, and Z. The field is growing tremendously in which is great because we have a lot of need. Do you ever hear from any of your former medical student mentors as they go either into residency or graduate? Oh, yeah. I hear, you know, not all. right? Some always reach out, especially if they see something I got a couple of texts from some former students that I'm gonna be doing this podcast. And then of course I see them at the conference. I'm a little bit like the old dad where I just look through the program. I see their names and I try my best to just to make it there just to show my support because I'm just so blown away by the things that they're doing. I just want to be their biggest cheerleader because they're all so great. That's wonderful. What key piece of advice do you have for medical students? And what advice would you give someone who's interested in mentoring? The biggest advice I would give medical students is do not listen to the negative. Do not listen to the negative ever because I can find a thousand people that will line up and tell you all the things that you can't do. Tell you you're not gonna match, you're not gonna do all this. What you really need to do is always stay positive regardless of your situation. And I can always attest to myself because when people say oh I don't think my CV is great I'm not gonna give you the details but my gosh I was not the best student. But the one thing that I had was that I visualize everything positively. I told myself I'm gonna make this match happen and I'm gonna give Rush for example no excuse that they can't rank me high even though I'm probably the worst student on paper. And so from me as example I'd said, "Ducky Young, what do you need me to do? Did the audition elective went to a sports medicine person? Did research with this person and I got myself high enough to be able to match?" And I really tell them every day just to positively visualize and kind of think forward towards I am going to match and I am going to create the good luck for myself because defeat thinking is gonna get you a negative outcome. And I say this to any student regardless of what they think their place is in the stratosphere of all the candidates. Because what makes you extraordinary may not be captured on a piece of paper. You know when I look at my residents and we match them we're like yay I never know what's gonna happen second, third and fourth year and they all surprised me with some amazing things. You know I've students that are doing this amazing health equity work that I've never would have dreamed of and couldn't do. I've some students that there's walk-in and the patients are just like don't let them leave. You know they're the greatest resident in the world I've never had such a great resident they're so nice to me they're so conscientious. And I said I could never pick that up on a piece of paper. And so I always tell the students figure out what your super power is and lean in on that as you go forward whether it be you're a great talker I had one of my classmates in residency my gosh he could walk into that room and in two minutes everybody would like him. And it was true because every program wanted him. I had another classmate who was the nicest person in the world everybody loved him. And I said well I can't be the fun guy and I can't be the nice guy but gosh darn it I can be the hard working guy and that's what made it work for me. And so I tell this to the students figure out that super power go to that audition elective show them what you can do and work hard and it will happen as a mentor the greatest thing that you can do is give your time because there's gonna be certain times that you're gonna get busy and you're gonna forget and those things are natural. But never say no I will never tell the student no I can't meet them I always tell them the same thing I might forget but email me bug me because I will feel bad and I will make sure I make it right because the worst thing that happened to me as a student was to be dismissed. There's a lot of people that said you know what you're not good enough to do X, Y and Z so we're just gonna dismiss you we're not gonna give you an interview we're not gonna even respond to your emails we're not gonna invest your time in you but I think every person has something to offer so that mentor should think even though this person is not as good as the last nine people that we got this person could be the CEO of the next hospital and I might need a job and that's the way that I view every student that person could invent the next Facebook and you know they can invite anyone on their yacht I would love for that to be me to be on that beautiful yacht. I think that's excellent advice you're absolutely right everybody does have their own strengths and and we need that variety of strengths in the field as well so I hope they heed that excellent advice that you're giving them. So outside of your busy schedule Robbie what do you like to do in your free time? You know my favorite thing to do is watch sports even though I do traumatic brain injury nerve rehab spinal cord I still love following and watching sports but I can sit back and relax and know that I'm not responsible for clearing any of these people that go back to play. I'm big YouTube person because I love to learn so I'll just throw in something random might be how the pyramids were built in Egypt and that you watch you know do a deep dive for long period of time. I've always been a big movie person so you know in Academy Awards season comes I feel very confident I can speak in an educated manner regarding the movies and then of course recently I've loved to travel I have some good friends that that love to travel so I'm trying to pick at least one place to go and enjoy it. What's your favorite place together even so far? So you know I know students are watching their mind is going to go in the wrong place when I say this but my favorite place so far has been Amsterdam and I'm not you know I'm doing any drugs I'm not you know doing any of the other inappropriate things but there's a vibe to Amsterdam that I could not recreate in London or Paris or anywhere else that I've been the fries there are outrageously good and the beer there is good so I'm a beer and fries kind of guy and the people there are very nice and it has water everywhere which is very therapeutic for me so I've enjoyed it. I'll have to take a trip there soon. Well I think it's just been amazing work that you're doing with the students it's so important for our field to help students learn more about our field unfortunately it's a specialty as you know very well that hasn't been taught in the medical schools and so it's sort of haphazard how students actually ultimately find out about it and it's hard for them to find mentors like you so I certainly commend you for that have you found again from talking with the students you're mentoring that there is more education in the medical schools about it or is it still really lacking as I know it's been historically I think there's more you know we have such great leaders I'm in some small groups with some great leaders and they are incorporating PMR into the third year rotations or early interventions so is more physiatrist have gone involved within the medical school throughout the nation more people are getting exposed to it so there's a lot of great work that the physiatrist that our community are doing already well on behalf of the academy I want to say congrats to you on your inclusion in the inaugural year of innovators and influencers great work working with the medical students like I say such an important part of all of our roles and I agree with you we should make every effort to be a mentor to somebody if we can for our listeners if you'd like to check out all 21 innovator and influencer honorees this year please visit aapmr.org/innovators and influencers and with that thanks for your time Robbie thanks to our listeners and stay tuned as we continue the conversation on the advancing PMR podcast