Sreelakshmi Panginikkod

I attribute my success to perseverance. I keep on trying, no matter what challenges come my way. That determination to keep moving forward and not give up has been the driving force behind everything I've accomplished in my career.

In my industry, particularly talking about being a physician, I think the purpose should be driving you. And everything else would fall in place, meaning your roles, your remuneration, your social recognition, everything else. They will come, but the very driving force for the person should be the purpose of serving our fellow beings, you know, like taking care of people, taking care of patients. If you have that feel in you, if you have that fire in you and interest in you, then you will never be tired, and you will also always feel that you made the right choice. Because if you are coming into the field by seeing anything other than that purpose, you may feel, you know, that's when you feel more burnout or confused. So I think it's very important to listen to yourself and make sure that you have that real drive to help people from a healthcare standpoint, like, you know, to listen to their problems, because we end up listening for hours. That really, like, listen to your heart, listen to what you want to do, and the purpose should drive you. Because it's inevitable that it can get rough, so that's what helps you keep going when things get rough, is having that drive.

The challenges that we have are many. One thing is we still don't have enough workforce to provide care in a timely fashion, especially in outpatient settings. So people who are looking for an appointment with, especially primary care physicians and also other subspecialties, do not get it in a timely fashion, especially in rural or less served locations in the U.S. That's where it is challenging, because the system is not self-sufficient. We don't have enough doctors or the staff to cater for the patient population, and that kind of causes strain and disappointment or dissatisfaction among the patients as well. As for opportunities, we have a lot of opportunities, especially in the world of advancing technology. With a lot of development in our hospital electronic environment itself, things are made simpler than it used to be, so it makes our professionals more efficient in doing what they're doing. Secondly, with artificial intelligence, we could hope for less of a need for more workforce issues, and we could cater to all patients in a timely fashion. That's where the AI can probably help us to triage and kind of rearrange the appointments in a way that the people who want to be seen earlier get seen. The referral system probably can even make differences in referral systems. I think a lot of that can get better with us using more responsibly, I mean, more effectively, and at the same time, responsibly, the AI. And same thing with clinical research. There can be a lot that can get better with AI because of its ability to process data.

The values most important to me are honesty and a collaborative effort, wherever we are doing things. The teamwork mindset is very valuable to me. I believe in being a team player and working together with others to achieve our goals.