Introducing Sanjay Agrawal, MD, former fellow of Yale Department of Internal Medicine. Agrawal completed his training in 1996 in Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine.
Where are you now?
I work and live in Leicester, England and have been working at the University Hospitals of Leicester since 2003. I am a pulmonologist focusing on interstitial lung disease and lung cancer as well as Intensive Care Medicine. My other interest is in treating tobacco dependence and I am the National Specialty Advisor to the National Health Service on tobacco dependence.
What do you love about your career?
The diversity of options—research, teaching, influencing national policy, developing the next generation of doctors and professional groups, but most of all for me is the joy and privilege of direct patient care and being able to answer questions clearly, alleviate fear and anxiety where possible and treat people with respect and dignity.
How did Yale prepare you for your career?
Doing a three year fellowship in PCCSM has prepared me in so many ways for my future career -learning from great faculty and role models, being given responsibility and freedom to manage patients and myself, undertake research in world class laboratories or faculties, and develop lifelong friendships and networks. Many of the fellows I worked with are working all over the world and I remain in touch with them a quarter of a century later.
What surprised you most about your field/area of expertise?
The range of options within each field. For example, in pulmonology there are many subspecialties with each requiring added expertise and thinking, and some areas having changed dramatically in the last 25 years (e.g. lung cancer).
What have been your biggest challenges and accomplishments since the beginning of the pandemic?
As with all ICU's we had to rapidly expand our Intensive care capacity during the pandemic and prepare for the unknown. Looking after patients and staff, dealing with limited resources, keeping up morale, communicating with relatives who could not visit whilst maintaining other urgent non-COVID work was challenging, but we have come through it stronger and prepared for further waves of infection.
What’s a fun fact about you?
One of my great loves that I took from my time in America is jazz music, and I now host a weekly jazz radio show on a local radio station.
The DIM spotlight is a feature that is part of the DIM Digest, highlighting alumni, former trainees, and faculty of the Department of Internal Medicine