The Stories of Match Day

• By Suzanna Cisneros
• March 18, 2019

Giving Back & Making an Impact 

When Logan Adams was an undergraduate at Lubbock Christian University, he heard about a student-run clinic at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC). He knew he wanted to study medicine and The Free Clinic at Lubbock Impact created an interest to attend the TTUHSC School of Medicine.
 
“I've always had a fascination with medicine, and I was attracted to the field because of the ability to care for folks going through some of their most difficult periods in their lives,” Adams said. “I knew it would be a fulfilling career. Primary care provides the ability to care for a breadth of problems and allows you to have long term continuity with those patients. Knowing the School of Medicine had a focus in primary care solidified my decision to attend TTUHSC.”
 
As a second-year medical student Adams became a part of the leadership team at The Free Clinic. He spearheaded a new program to provide vaccinations to those who did not have resources for health care. The clinic partnered with Walgreens and the Lubbock Health Department to make the program possible.
 
“The Free Clinic brings to life what you are learning from lecture,” Adams said, “The clinic is often the only place to receive care for many in our community. Volunteering makes a difference in the lives of those patients and is a reminder of your initial commitment to this profession.”
 

The Free Clinic experience peaked Adams’ interest in health care policy and access to health care. He worked with the South Plains Homeless Consortium, conducting an annual survey of people experiencing homelessness in the area asking about health care. He conducted collaborative research with Open Door, an organization that helps people experiencing poverty and homelessness.
 
“Research shows if somebody is housed, ER visits and inpatient stays decrease,” Adams said. “Individuals living on the streets are vulnerable and often have unique medical and mental health needs. In primary care, you can not only address the immediate health need but also those social determinants of health, like housing, to reduce morbidity of disease.”
 
Adams said the School of Medicine has given him an exceptional education. He had the opportunity to do an infectious disease rotation at Johns Hopkins Hospital. His skill set and medical education compared well to others from across the country. Mentors like Kelly Bennett, M.D., and Fiona Prabhu, M.D., and faculty at the Department of Internal Medicine have provided support that Adams calls invaluable. 
 
Adams matched in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital

All Business…and Medicine

 
As a 10-year-old girl, Niki Parikh remembers accompanying her father, Nitin Parikh, M.D., an anesthesiologist, to watch surgeries. He had a hard time pulling her away.
 
“Surgery was the coolest thing I had ever seen,” Parikh said. “I was fascinated! That’s when I knew I wanted to be a surgeon.”
 
As a senior at Lubbock High School, Parikh was accepted into the Undergraduate to Medical School Initiative program, but before beginning medical school, she first completed her undergraduate degree from Texas Tech University (TTU) in two and a half years. She completed her Master of Business Administration and also Master’s of Science inBusiness Administration with a concentration in Health Organization Management to see what she called “the other side of the coin of health care.”
 
“I've always been interested in business and the health administration side of medicine like quality improvement and patient satisfaction,” Parikh said. “Since I was going into medical school, I wanted to see the health administrative side of things and see how I could improve the health care setting with that perspective.”
 

One master’s project she completed, she later continued in medical school that looked at quality improvement in the operating room. The Six Sigma project is a process improvement methodology used in the operating room to see how turnover times can be improved to better overall efficiency. Parikh shadowed surgeons and said the ability to bring a medical as well as the administrative perspective has been something that's been useful.
 
A turning point in medical school for Parikh was the opportunity to shadow urologists on a surgery rotation.
 
“That's when I met Dr. Cynthia Smith, who has just been one of the best mentors I could have ever asked for,” Parikh said.  “I get to work with people of all ages and it has a good mix between the medical side of medicine and the surgical side of medicine.  I also worked with Dr. Pranav Sharma with the research side of it, and that's when I decided that I wanted to go into academic urology.  The academic side of medicine is more focused on not only patient care but research, teaching and improving the field of medicine.”
 
Future urology residents found out in January about their match. Parikh matched at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
 
“Our TTUHSC School of Medicine, under the leadership of Dean Berk, has done a great job of preparing us not only for the technical and clinical aspects in medicine, but also the humility of it, which I think sometimes can get lost in medicine,” Parikh said. “There are so many things that I could see myself impacting in the medical field in general. It's been a lot of hard work, but it's been completely worth it.”