Page 43 - Healthcare News Sep/Oct 2022

HEALTHCARE HEROES OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
patients blankets or small things just to make them feel appreciated,” he went on. “We also strive to push our nurses and docs to really bring patients in when they come into the ER; they don’t sit very long in the waiting room.”
As a result of such initiatives, Noble’s ER
has made great strides during Shukla’s tenure. The unit has dramatically increased patient- satisfaction scores, for example, while also gaining a geriatric emergency department accreditation,
“Not everyone has access to healthcare, and I’m a big proponent of health equity because I feel everyone should have the same access to healthc”are as your next-door neighbor.
well-suited to serve the needs of older patients in the community.
The sum of these efforts has earned Shukla the Healthcare Heroes award in the highly competitive category known as Emerging Leader. And he is worthy of that designation, not only for his work in the ER, but also at Baystate Health (he is on the Baystate Medical Practices board
of directors), in the community (he sits on the nonprofit People’s Institute and also coaches
youth soccer and baseball), and even on the ice. Indeed, Shukla is one of the team physicians for
the Springfield Thunderbirds, and was with the team through its exciting run to the Calder Cup finals last season.
He described that work as fun and rewarding — adjectives he would apply to every aspect of his work in medicine and administration.
Degrees of Improvement
Shukla was born in England and came to this country with his family in 1980. Early on, he
said, his father, a professor of Pharmacology at the University of Missouri, and mother, a school teacher, impressed upon him the importance of not only education, but service to the community.
He achieved both while serving as a volunteer at the University of Missouri Hospital and Clinics while in junior high school, work he described as a learning experience on many levels.
“During the summer, I went there every Tuesday and Wednesday and spent eight hours each day volunteering in different parts of the hospital,” he recalled. “It was then that I realized that this was my true calling because I really wanted to help people and really wanted to make a difference.”
After graduating from medical school, he became a resident at Baystate Medical Center with a focus initially on general surgery. But at the advice of some friends who implored him to consider emergency medicine because he seemed a natural for that kind of work, his career outlook began to shift.
“I did some shadowing, I did some shifts in the ER, and eventually I went through the process of applying to be an ER resident,” he said, adding that he quickly fell in love with that setting — again, not just because of the fast pace and each- day-is-different aspect of the work.
“Not everyone has access to healthcare, and I’m a big proponent of health equity because I feel everyone should have the same access to healthcare as your next-door neighbor,” said Shukla, who, before coming to Noble, served
as associate medical director in the Emergency Department at Baystate Franklin Medical Center. “When patients come to my ER, I treat them with respect, I treat them exactly how I’d want to treat my family members, and I try to do everything I can to make sure their health is better when they leave the ER.”
Elaborating, he said many people are coming
to the ER on the worst day of their life, whether they’re having a stroke, a heart attack, or other medical problem, and it is the job of the ER doctor to “step up and help those patients.”
“It’s our goal to help lift them up and help them feel better,” he went on. “And in terms of mindset, you have to be able to function on the go and multi-task many different things, because there so many problems that are detail-oriented: the lab or CT scan, whether you have to stitch someone up, give different medications ... there are all these processes you have to follow, and with every visit, there’s quality involved, and you have to meet certain metrics.”
Despite the fast pace and the constant flow of
2022 Healthcare Heroes. Well done!
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