Dr. Padmanabha Shenoy

I have been interested in medicine from school days as I used to like doctors who could alleviate pain and sufferings of fellow human beings. After I finished my schooling and joined MBBS in Medical College, Alleppey, I found physicians like Dr. Bhasi, a great teacher and an excellent human being, extremely stimulating. His clinical classes were so good that I had no hesitation in making a decision to become a good physician. I really like solving the puzzle of multiple diseases with minimum number of investigations and strongly believe that making the correct diagnosis is the key to the treatment. After I finished my MBBS I was lucky to be a topper in the All India Post Graduate Exam and could join the prestigious JIPMER in Pondicherry. Internal medicine department in JIPMER is one of the best in the country with the excellent professors like Dr. Sethuraman, Dr. A K Das and Dr. R P Swaminathan around.

When I joined medicine in JIPMER my plan was to become a cardiologist. But during my MD days the pain the arthritis patients went through and the fact that there was a severe shortage of trained rheumatologists made me rethink my decision. I decided to dedicate my life to the upcoming specialty of rheumatology. I was sure that lots can be done to alleviate the pain of arthritis patients and improve the quality of living in these patients. With god’s grace I could get into one of the two seats available at that time in the country. The three years in SGPGI made me a different person.

In SGPGI, I was really fortunate to be trained under excellent teachers and great researchers like Dr. Amita Agarwal , Prof. Sita Naik and Dr. Ramnath Misra. I realized that a doctor has to do much more than just treating patients. He has to observe closely what more he can do to improve the patient’s life. More over in India were rheumatology is still in its infancy we all have to work extra hours so that we can develop newer methods to suit Indian patients. In first year of my residency in SGPGI I noticed that scleroderma patients were the most depressed as the general perception was...

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