Indiana physicians group cites a natural leader
Dr. Risheet Patel ’01 talks fast. That may be a reflection of an always-active inner drive that has led to an impressive, though still nascent career as a physician.
Patel was raised in Indianapolis and entered Union College in 1997 as part of the then seven-year Leadership in Medicine program with Albany Medical College. That program, which now requires four years at Union, allowed Patel to complete a double major in biology and French before tackling four years of medical school.
After graduation from medical school, Patel moved on to residency with the Community Health Network Family Medicine Residency program, based in Indianapolis. Today, he’s in his first year as a family practice doctor at Olio Road Family Care in Fishers, Ind. And in late July, Patel was honored with the Indiana Academy of Family Physicians Outstanding Resident Award. The award is presented annually to a family practice resident who shows exceptional interest and involvement in family medical care and exemplifies the best qualities of a family doctor.
The organization described Patel as: “A natural leader who has made a lasting impression on patients, students, fellow residents and teachers in just a few short years. He has been an ambassador for the specialty and a pillar in his community. Though cognizant of the importance of the physician-patient relationship, Dr. Patel sees beyond the walls of his residency and new practice, recognizing the responsibility that he is faced with in the greater community.”
That storyline is common to a set of pre-med students who earned a Union College degree and later became doctors and leaders in their field. Patel, like other physicians with Union roots, credits study abroad and a liberal arts education with broadening his professional interests and improving his bedside manner.
“Half of my job is communicating with patients and getting to know them. Obviously, I am diagnosing and treating them too,” Patel said. “But if I can communicate and relate with them better, that allows us to have a better relationship. Then, patients tend to do the things I ask them to do.”
Patel completed a term abroad in Rennes, France, studying French in the fall of 1999. That international experience came a few years before Patel joined a group of 13 Albany Med students on a medical mission in Kenya and Uganda in 2003. The students visited small villages and gave basic care.
“We just did not have the capability to treat everyone that we met. We really felt bad that we had to turn people away, but we had limitations to what we could do,” Patel said.
That was an early lesson in another area of interest for Patel: Aiding large populations by influencing public health policy. Patel has, along with the Indiana Academy of Family Physicians, taken up an effort to help create local laws to ban smoking in restaurants and public buildings. Unlike California and New York, Indiana has no statewide ban on smoking. Patel, 28, has appeared at town and city council meetings to testify about the public health benefits of smoking limitations.
“As a physician, you can treat people one at a time by seeing individual patients, but you can also affect thousands or millions of patients by working with public health policy,” Patel said.
Patel’s parents, though born in Kenya, hail from the Gujarat region in western India. His mother, Shobhna Patel, is a pharmacist and his father, Raj Patel, is a dentist. His sister, Reisha Patel, is now completing her final year at Albany Medical College.
“But I am the first physician in my family,” Patel joked.