Learning Paths Podcast
Suraj Samtani
As a medical oncologist, Dr. Suraj Samtani knows his patients trust him to provide the most effective treatment possible. To do that, he must continue learning about the many recent advances in the field of oncology. In this episode of Learning Paths, Suraj discusses his approach to professional development, and his contributions to research and educational projects that he hopes will improve outcomes for cancer patients across Latin America.
Episode Transcript
Ben Rubenstein: Well Suraj, thank you so much for joining me here today.
Suraj Samtani: Thanks Ben, it’s a great honor.
Ben Rubenstein: I thought we could start just by hearing a little bit about your interest in medicine and you know, where it began, how you began to study it, and why you decided to focus on oncology.
Suraj Samtani: Okay, great so I actually started in medical school at Universdidad del Desarollo here in Santiago, Chile. My dad was also a doctor, so I was always connected to medicine since I was small. And as soon as I finished general medicine I did internal medicine, I always liked internal medicine since I started medical school. And once I finished internal medicine, my father got diagnosed with cancer and once I saw the connection the physician develops with the patient throughout this process, I realized, I wanted to be an oncologist to be able to guide the patients during the diagnosis and treatment and try to improve the quality of life really motivates me to continue to become a better professional each and every day. I completed medical oncology also here in Santiago Chile and I’ve always liked the drive to continuous medical education and I have a master’s in epidemiology and clinical research and also specialize in molecular oncology and immuno-oncology, which is my basis of work in my daily clinical practice nowadays, and in that sense, I always believed that continuous medical education helps you to stay up to date and to become successful in any field, which at the end will help us to become better professional for our patients, which is the most important task in our practice, and I’ve had the honor to participate in different educational and observership programs at Sloan-Kettering and Princess Margaret Hospital clinic in Barcelona. I currently work at Bradford HIll Institute in Santiago Chile, [unintelligible] and intensive care unit, and I’m a director of a foundation called Fundacion Chilena de Inmuno Oncologia.
Ben Rubenstein: You mentioned this commitment to continuous education, which is, you know, part of any medical professional’s career in some sense, there’s always some requirement that you need to stay up to date. But I wonder what kinds of challenges you’ve faced in terms of learning new things, progressing in your understanding, particularly in oncology, you know, whether those challenges are about just finding time or really just figuring out what you need to focus on. Have there been particular challenges you’ve faced in those areas?
Suraj Samtani: Oh, actually that point is a very important point nowadays in our clinical practice and during our whole process of becoming doctors and treating our patients. The landscape of treatment in oncology has drastically changed in the past few years, with novel therapies, such as immunotherapy, targeted therapy. Every year, in all the big conferences, you have new biomarkers, which can provide better prognosis for our oncology patients, so being up to date in a country where oncologist is a limited resource is probably the most difficult task of all and the lack of advancement opportunity makes it a huge challenge for current medical physicians. In that sense, as an example, when we start our specialty in medical oncology, the treatment, we were using a first-line treatment for many tumors; [that is] not the first-line treatment that we’ll be using once we finish our residency program, so that’s a huge change in two years and we’re living it during the last 10 years and we’re going to continue living it in the future years, I’m sure about it.
And another major issue is the work overload due to the high incidence of oncology patients and the lack of staff, which brings up a huge problem in the medical world, which is frequent burnout in our profession, especially in medical oncology, especially here in Chile, 80% of the population is attended in the public system and there are few oncologists to cope up with the amount of patients that we have, so the burnout is really a big problem and a frequent problem within our specialty.
Ben Rubenstein: What approaches have you taken to to kind of combat some of that, and, you know, further your education and maybe find new opportunities for yourself and for others in Chile and across Latin America?
Suraj Samtani: Sure Ben – on that point, I think tackling global health challenges demands the appropriate use of available technologies. As technological and social, cultural disparities between different regions or provinces within the same country are very prevalent in Latin America. In this case digital health could significantly improve the health care access, use, quality and outcome. But realizing that this possibility requires of course personal training in digital health and, in this particular case, I really believe the HMX courses of Harvard University are an essential tool to every health care provider in oncology and, in this case, for example, HMX courses on immuno-oncology and precision oncology provide the perfect connection between the molecular basis of cancer and its clinical relevance in our daily practice, so these courses really provide you the basic concepts of cancers and novel treatment, but they also provide you the relevance of how we could apply these concepts on our daily practice with clinical cases. So HMX courses in this sense, could help us to to continue in this medical education to stay up to date and, of course, become successful in this field. It helps us to understand, not only the novel treatments that how I told you are changing each and every year, new treatments are appearing in all tumors basically. But it also helps us to develop research in a better way, once you understand the basics, you know which questions are still unanswered and how to help to develop research to answer the question.
Ben Rubenstein: So one unique aspect of the HMX courses is the fact that they’re fully online, accessible to learners around the world, who can access the courses on their own time, at their own pace, and so I wonder how important of a factor you think that is both for yourself and for your colleagues who may be significantly constrained by time and burnout, as you mentioned.
Suraj Samtani: Sure Ben, I think that is the most important factor, and we have a lot of clinical systems and a lot of patients in countries in which the lack of oncologists is a huge problem, to be able to do these courses online at your own time makes it a very important factor to consider taking the HMX courses. The courses are very well-structured, it has evaluations after each and every class which helps the students examine the concepts taught were fully understood, and it has interactive figures which are remarkable. I think one important factor that makes the HMX courses very good for everyone around the world is that the duration of each class provides sufficient time to deliver the key concepts without losing the attention of the student.
Ben Rubenstein: So in addition to your own professional education that you’ve done through the HMX courses and elsewhere, you’re also very involved yourself in helping to educate your colleagues and the next generation of oncologists through universities, through professional organizations, and so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why you’re involved in that and sort of what value you’ve found from those experiences.
Suraj Samtani: Sure Ben, so since I started medical school I‘ve participated in different professors’ course assistance programs, which has helped me to learn how to develop myself and different aspects of clinical practice and research. When I was in oncology also I was fortunate enough to have been guided by my mentor, Mauricio Burotto, which has guided me in the past in order to be able to achieve my goals and stimulate personal and professional growth. I think mentoring is a huge positive factor in one’s growth as a professional in different specialties and mentoring, is something that is very well-structured in the US, but I think it still has its limitations in Latin America, and I hope that soon it becomes as well structured as it is in other countries. But now it is definitely our turn to be able to contribute in every way that we can and I truly believe that the role of collaborative partnerships can play in sharing resources, experiences, and lessons learned between countries to optimize training and research opportunities in Latin America. Usually data on Latin American patients is underreported, I’m really motivated to continue doing research, especially in Latin America, to specifically answer some of these questions: Why don’t all patients respond to immunotherapy, how to improve outcomes in these patient, and how can we optimize the treatment of adverse effects of immunotherapy. In this last point, we have published, with a collaborative group, interesting data on the role of biomarkers in the response to immunotherapy, the incidence of immune-related adverse effects in our Latin American population, which are not reported on with such frequency in clinical trials, so I think that by contributing with our local data, with our experience, will help to develop research in a better way and, of course, to answer this question on how to optimize the treatments in different populations, so we can have better outcomes for our patients.
Ben Rubenstein: So it sounds like you feel like the future is bright, there’s a lot of opportunity and progress being made in terms of improving the knowledge of oncologists across Latin America. What do you see in the future, both in general and, you know, for yourself in your career?
Suraj Samtani: Sure. I really hope to continue growing and every aspect of this beautiful specialty I had the opportunity to choose; we oncologists have a deep desire to change the course of the disease for patients with cancer – cure when it’s possible and when a cure is not possible, to extend and improve the quality of life remaining and to provide, you know, effective palliation of symptoms, and our research has to contribute to optimize all of these aspects, not only to optimize the world survival, but for our patients to live more, but to live better off. I feel lucky enough that my patients give me their trust to be able to treat them I always hope not to let them down. So I always feel that kind of pressure to stay up to date and always try to gain more training and good communication skills, which is essential for patient management and teamwork. My recent project is the creation of a medical foundation, and our main objective is to provide a prompt and accurate diagnosis and facilitate the access of personalized treatments for cancer patients. Most of our patients in Chile are attending at the public system in which the resources for our patients are limited.
Ben Rubenstein: You talk about feeling lucky that your patients trust you, I mean, given all that you’ve talked about here today, I think your patients probably feel pretty lucky to have a doctor like yourself who, you know, really is committed to not only providing great care to them, but thinking big picture about how to improve the system and improve outcomes for all patients so I think that’s really admirable and I wonder, you know not to put you on the spot too much, but you know, for those who might be out there listening thinking about going into oncology you know, maybe currently studying medicine in Latin America or elsewhere, I mean, would you have any advice as far as what to focus on, what to be thinking about, how to approach a career in this field?
Suraj Samtani: I think medical oncology is a specialty in which many could be under motivated to take in at the beginning, because of lack of information of how oncology has evolved in the past few years. My honest suggestion would be like to please have an approach to clinical medical oncology, whichever areas, just to come to know how oncology has evolved in the past few years. It’s a beautiful specialty, the patient and their families trust you completely with this disease, which we know it’s a very, very complicated disease, but you have the opportunity to treat your patients, to be there with your patients, no matter if you win or you lose in terms of response of cancer, but if you are there with your patient during all times, when the cancer reduces when the character progresses, if they have pain, if they don’t have pain, it’s really an honor to be to be there with them, and I really thank them too for trusting me during all the process, and I hope to continue doing it each and every day.
Ben Rubenstein: Well, I think that’s great advice and I think that future oncologists will certainly be inspired by that and hopefully, take a lot of those lessons to heart, and you know, pursue their careers in the way that you have. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today, and I hope to speak to you again in the future and learn more about all the progress you’ve made in Latin America and around the world, hopefully.
Suraj Samtani: Hopefully. Thank you so much, Ben, for this opportunity and and, hopefully, we can motivate many more students to continue to this beautiful path.
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