Tuesday, August 27, 2024
It was an eight-week opportunity of a lifetime for Kush Kinariwala, a second-year student at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, as he was selected to participate in The Greater Boston MSTAR Program at Harvard Medical School.
Kinariwala was one of only 11 medical students selected nationwide and the only student
from an osteopathic school. The Medical Student Training in Aging Research program
is designed to give medical students an in-person aging research experience and an
introduction to the field of geriatric medicine.
Though very early in his medical school training, Kinariwala became interested in geriatrics through the curriculum at TCOM.
“I’m still venturing into aspects of what exactly I want to be, what patients I want to see and that’s what led me towards looking into the field of geriatrics,” Kinariwala said. “I’ve always had an open mind about who I want to give care to and the more I learned about this aging research program it seemed like a great opportunity.”
In his first year at TCOM, Kinariwala began working with TCOM’s Associate Professor of Geriatrics in the Department of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics Sarah Ross, DO, MS, CMD on the Self-Management Program for Brain Health. It was Ross who inspired Kinariwala to apply for the MSTAR program at Harvard.
“Dr. Ross is an amazing geriatrician and being able to work with her on research projects
and seeing how she takes care of patients was a really great experience for me,” Kinariwala
said. “I knew that this would be a great way to spend my summer in Boston doing aging
research and learning more about geriatric care.”
It was a busy eight-week schedule for Kinariwala that started at the end of May and ran through July. The students attended lectures twice a week, while also going to one of the top hospitals in the nation twice a week, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Kinariwala also had the chance to shadow and work at the only academic nursing home provider in the nation, Hebrew SeniorLife.
It was in the hospital and nursing home where Kinariwala saw that care of older adults doesn’t involve just geriatricians, but all of the health care fields.
“I saw the complex care that a geriatrician had to give a patient at the bedside, addressing all of the medical problems, but also helping them live a very peaceful life, that really stuck out to me,” Kinariwala said. “I was completely blown away, and that is one of the biggest takeaways from this summer is geriatric care is much more complex and involved. They would talk with a nutritionist, a cardiologist, or maybe even a surgeon about the care for a patient, and it was the complex care aspect I really enjoyed.”
It was during one of the lectures the students attended that Kinariwala recalled the speaker telling them, “you don’t have to be a geriatrician to take care of older people.”
Kinariwala saw glimpses of that in his work with Ross. He worked with her on the self-management program for brain health, which is a study evaluating a health coaching program targeted at helping individuals implement brain-healthy lifestyles to help reduce dementia risk.
TCOM Student At National Research Program At Harvard Medical School Copy“I learned that if you want to care for older adults, you can do that through other fields and specialties,” Kinariwala said. “If we incorporate geriatric care into each practice, it will elevate the standard of care that’s provided in this country. We learned in our lectures that the population is aging, but there is not much research going into geriatrics. More is going on now, but there is much more support that’s needed.”
The MSTAR participants worked on an aging-related research project with a faculty mentor and created relationships and connections with peers and faculty members.
“Anytime we can have a TCOM student represent our institution at a national level
it’s a huge win,” Ross said. “National MSTAR programs provide great opportunities
for future training and mentorship. I think the most valuable part of participating
in the Boston program for Kush has been the networking and new relationships he’s
been able to establish. I know that he hopes to do residency training after graduation
in that area, so it’s great that he has been able to make connections so early on
in his medical school career.”
The experience has motivated Kinariwala to not only continue his work with Ross but also brainstorm new ideas on research projects of his own with faculty at TCOM and in Boston to develop his research skills.
“There is a high demand for qualified physicians to care for our aging population and promote the representation of older adults in research studies and topics,” Ross said. “My hope is that our MSTAR students take an intentional approach to caring for their older adult patients and are able to interpret the research as it relates to their individual patients.”
“The MSTAR program is phenomenal, it allowed me to learn more about a field that is not talked about very much in popular medicine today,” Kinariwala said. “I want to develop more skills to become a better research clinician, that was one of the most unique things about the Boston environment, the clinicians all had great research careers.
“I certainly want to thank Dr. Ross for guiding me to this program and Dr. Collin O’Hara for supporting me, it was a dream come true.”
From HSC Newsroom - Our People by Steven Bartolotta