The AAMC team recently sat down with Dr. Sood to learn more about his work. Learn more about Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine below.
Can you give a description of your work?
I practice interventional pain medicine, meaning I diagnose and treat pain conditions using a combination of medications and minimally invasive procedures.
What’s your career story?
I took a unique path into Pain Medicine. I decided to pursue medical school around my junior year of college. Because I decided late into my undergrad education that I wanted to be a doctor, I had to decide if I wanted to spend an extra year in college to get into U.S. medical school. I ultimately decided to attend an international program in Manipal, India.
I then did my residency and fellowship in anesthesiology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. My residency was four years, with the first year focusing on internal medicine and the next three years focusing on anesthesiology. I then did a one-year fellowship in interventional pain medicine.
After fellowship, I joined the National Spine and Pain Center, a private practice group. A few years later I became the Medical Director of the office in Germantown, Maryland.
I really want to highlight that if you’re considering going to medical school abroad, it is harder to match into residency, you’ll have to score higher on your USMLEs, and you’ll do even more research projects than applicants from U.S. medical schools.
How would you describe a typical workday?
A big difference between anesthesiology and pain medicine is the work-life balance. While anesthesiology has a great work-life balance, pain medicine’s is even better. In pain medicine you often work 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., you don’t work weekends, and you rarely take call.
Generally, I work Monday through Friday. Half of my day is seeing new and follow-up patients. The other half of my day is spent doing a variety of procedures. In chronic pain, there are a wide array of conditions patients come in with. The number of procedures you must know is very high because depending on what is causing the pain, you have to do a procedure for that cause. So, I can perform between 25-30 different interventional procedures.
What parts of your job do you find most challenging? What parts do you find most rewarding?
The most challenging part is seeing patients after they’ve failed surgery — especially back surgery. In a lot of cases, these patients will ask “Can you cure me now?” even after they’ve had surgery. Helping them becomes even more difficult because they’ll likely have lots of scar tissue, and the pain can be even worse than it was prior to the surgery. Cases like these are why it’s important to make sure we have an accurate diagnosis before heading right into major surgery.
The most rewarding part is helping patients get their quality of life back. A lot of my patients, especially the elderly ones, just want to be able to function. Helping change these people’s lives with a five-minute, minimally invasive procedure is a great reward.
What previous experiences have helped you most in pain medicine?
While I was an undergraduate student, I volunteered in the oncology department at my local hospital. I really recommend that before students go to medical school, they volunteer at a hospital to make sure they want to practice medicine. My experience volunteering was when I started developing empathy towards patients and realizing I had a growing desire to help them.
What’s one thing you wish someone would’ve told you before going into pain medicine?
During, and right after, my fellowship, I expected I would be helping and curing everybody. You’ll realize quickly, especially in chronic pain, that sometimes you won’t be able to cure a patient. Then it comes down to the management aspect of pain medicine. Even if you can’t cure someone, you don’t want to increase their pain through more surgeries. You have to know when to stop and switch the focus to pain management.
What’s something that would surprise people about pain medicine?
There are new procedures coming out every year that are less invasive and can help patients just as much as surgery!
Are there any resources that focus on your field that our audience should be aware of?
I am a part of the American Society of Regional Anesthesia (ASRA) and the American Society of Anesthesiology (ASA). My favorite journal is called Pain and is great to stay up to date on research in this field. In the anesthesiology social media space, I highly recommend people check out Dr. Singleton, Dr. Moon, and Dr. Myro. I really think that we need more pain doctors on social media, and I’m working on getting them there!
To learn more about Dr. Sood and his work, follow him on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.