A New Practice
In medical school, my interest in how muscles, tendons, and bones worked together initially attracted me to the medical specialty of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Also known as PM&R or physiatry, this field focuses on helping people recover from injuries or illnesses that affect their ability to move and function. I ultimately chose this as my specialty and underwent PM&R residency training at the prestigious Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in New Jersey after I graduated from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in 2011.
During residency, I loved the team-based approach to caring for patients in the rehabilitation hospital, working with many different therapists and nurses to provide comprehensive care that addressed the individual needs of each patient. I learned to combine medical knowledge with a holistic approach to treatment that included the physical, emotional, and social aspects of a patient's life to make a difference in their function and quality of life. Even for patients with crushed bones, traumatic brain injuries, and spinal cord injuries, there was always hope and progress made during rehabilitation.
After completing residency, I started my first job at a clinic within a large hospital system. I learned that the clinic overbooked patients to offset potential lost revenue if patients didn't show up for their appointments. If all my patients did show up, then I would inevitably run behind schedule, which did not make me or my patients happy. It seemed to me that the hospital system limited the time I could spend with each patient and treatments I could offer to minimize costs and increase profits. This was not the way I had been trained to practice medicine.
I jumped at an opportunity to learn medical acupuncture through the Helms Medical Institute with other like-minded physicians eager to supplement their medical knowledge in order to help their patients. I found the holistic benefits of acupuncture including pain relief, stress reduction, and improved well-being to pair very well with the holistic approach of physiatric care that I was trained in.
The impulse to combine the knowledge I have of physiatry and acupuncture to help my patients recover from injuries has been with me for many years. It is the way I want to practice rehabilitation medicine: providing personalized care through a holistic approach that addresses healthy habits, body awareness, and injury prevention. While medications, injections, and surgeries can be very helpful at times, they also come with numerous risks. Acupuncture, on the other hand, has very few, if any side effects and is generally very well-tolerated. I am excited to share my new practice, and I invite you to partner with me on your rehabilitation journey.
