Today we’d like to introduce you to Amita Shah.
Amita, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
After the basic idea was developed, I decided to try my first “interview” with a medical student who was shadowing me in the OR, John Kouam. I had no idea that I would get THAT kind of amazing story from someone that just walked through my door. (You can read his story on SAPP) That interview gave me a sign that we were on the right path. After our OR cases, John approached me and told me he wanted to work on the project with me.
We started brainstorming and he recruited fellow medical students at the UT Health San Antonio Long School of Medicine, Nasrullah Abdurrazaq, Claire Schenken, Sujaan Lal, and Will Young. This became the founding group for SAPP. They all had prior experiences with writing, photography, and editing wanted to continue to do their hobbies during their free time. A year later, Allie Vasak, Marie Vu, Abakar Baraka, Janet Li, and Anna Wedler joined us. We currently have 8 active members and are active on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and our Webpage.
SAPP is run and managed by the students and they have expanded the idea and reach way beyond the scope of just sharing patient stories. We are constantly working to improve what we are doing as we learn more about all the aspects of sharing stories and creating content. We still growing and are bringing in the newest generation of health care providers. It’s exciting to see how we evolved!
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
John and I started planning SA People Project in January 2020. Right before our first meeting with the whole founding group in March 2020, the pandemic shut everything down.
We started virtually and due to regulations at the school and our own schedules, we have continued to work virtually for most of the time. We were able to adapt and learn new technology and now it is the foundation for making this project work. This has also helped us with conducting interviews while maintaining safety and health protocols.
We are all in healthcare and the work for SAPP is done in between our full-time jobs. Coordinating all our non-coordinated schedules has been a challenge. I work as a surgeon and the students are all in different stages of training. But, someone’s busy time will be someone else’s free time so we help each other out and make schedules to accommodate that.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
“Everyone has a story”.
We are a group of medical professionals that are here to tell the stories of the remarkable people in San Antonio, TX. Our mission is to share inspiring stories to help spread hope and positivity. We believe that everyone has a story worth telling and the people featured are regular people that we meet in our lives. Our approach is unique in that we do not always have a story in mind when we interview, we just talk and let them guide the conversation.
Every time, we are amazed by the lives that they lead and the stories that come out. We are active on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and on our webpage and are always looking for new people to interview and more people to join us in writing, photos, and other content creation.
What matters most to you? Why?
SAPP is our fight against the dehumanization of medicine. We are healthcare professionals that want to keep the human aspect of medicine at the forefront. The patient in the room is a full human being with a lifetime of experiences and while we may not always know the full story, it is important to keep that in mind.
Each year there are more demands on doctors. We are told to see more patients in less time while maintaining our boundaries, wellness, and balance. What results is that the meaningful connections with patients that make our job special are harder to make and there is an increasing amount of burnout in medicine.
This results in the loss of many excellent doctors. Keeping in touch with oneself through hobbies such as writing, photography, and other creative outlets is one way to fight burnout. The other way is to keep purpose and meaning in our jobs. I feel that SAPP does this for us.
I think for all of us, we also wanted to further expand our interactions with people – the basis for our desire to become physicians. Through SAPP, students have been able to have interactions with patients very early in their medical training, instead of at the end of their second year. The students have met people that have become inspirations to them and some of our interviewees are now their mentors.
The unintentional benefit of being involved with SAPP is that we’ve developed into a support group for each other. The students further along in their training give advice to the others and can commiserate with their peers. We keep in touch between meetings and when someone is having difficulties, everyone rallies behind them.
For me, being involved with SAPP has changed how I interact with the world. I am more intentional with making meaningful connections with people I meet. Life is busy as a surgeon, but there is always time for people and I remember that “Everyone has a story”.
Contact Info:
- Email: sapeopleproject@gmail.com
- Website: https://sapeopleproject.org/
- Instagram: @sapeopleproject
- Twitter: @sapeopleproject
Image Credits
@sujaanlalphotography and @allievasak
