Shadow Me Next!

Beyond the OR: Medicine, Mentorship, and Making a Difference | Dr. Kushagra Verma, MD

• Ashley Love • Season 1 • Episode 43

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Dr. Kushagra Verma's journey reminds us that finding your calling often happens through unexpected rotations and powerful mentorships rather than childhood dreams.

What makes his approach to spine surgery truly distinctive is the blend of technical excellence with deep humanity. Dr. Verma describes his complex surgical work as an intricate three-dimensional puzzle that draws on his engineering background. Yet beyond the operating room, he's built a practice that prioritizes patient education, using 65-inch TVs to explain conditions and giving surgical patients his personal cell phone number to ease anxiety. This combination of technical precision and compassionate communication transforms lives affected by spine problems that can create "the same disability scores as people with terminal cancer."

Perhaps most remarkable is how Dr. Verma has structured his practice to reflect his values. He intentionally hires pre-health students aspiring to medicine and PA school, providing them with mentorship while simultaneously expanding access to care. His yearly medical missions to Africa to perform free scoliosis surgeries is "the best thing that I do," funded by the success of his private practice. Through candid discussion of both clinical and administrative challenges, Dr. Verma offers a blueprint for creating a sustainable medical career that resists burnout through purpose and meaningful relationships.

Ready to hear more inspiring stories from healthcare leaders who've found their unique path? Subscribe to Shadow Me Next for conversations that go beyond the surface and follow us on Instagram and Facebook @shadowmenext for highlights and previews of upcoming guests.

To learn more about Dr. Verma and his office: 

Instagram: @ascmd

Website: advanedspinecare.com


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Ashley :

Hello and welcome to Shadow Me Next, a podcast where I take you into and behind the scenes of the medical world to provide you with a deeper understanding of the human side of medicine. I'm Ashley, a physician assistant, medical editor, clinical preceptor and the creator of Shadow Me Next. It is my pleasure to introduce you to incredible members of the healthcare field and uncover their unique stories, the joys and challenges they face and what drives them in their careers. It's access you want and stories you need, whether you're a pre-health student or simply curious about the healthcare field. I invite you to join me as we take a conversational and personal look into the lives and minds of leaders in medicine. I don't want you to miss a single one of these conversations, so make sure that you subscribe to this podcast, which will automatically notify you when new episodes are dropped, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at shadow me next, where we will review highlights from this conversation and where I'll give you sneak previews of our upcoming guests.

Ashley :

When you look at someone's career from the outside, it's easy to think it was all planned from the beginning, but Dr Kushagra Verma's path as a fellowship-trained orthopedic spine surgeon was not linear. He once thought he'd be an engineer and later imagined delivering high-risk pregnancies, and yet finally found his calling in the operating room during a pediatric spine rotation. What makes his story remarkable, though, isn't just the technical complexity of his work. It's the relationships that anchor it, from mentors who shaped his vision and students he now coaches into medicine, to the children in Africa whose lives are transformed by his volunteer surgeries. Dr Verma reminds us that medicine is about persistence, resilience and never taking no for an answer. We talk about the long road of training, what it means to run a practice with both purpose and sustainability, and how the power of mentorship can change not only careers but entire communities.

Ashley :

Please keep in mind that the content of this podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered as professional medical advice. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. This is Shadow Me Next with Dr Kushagra Verma. Dr Verma, thank you so much for joining me on Shadow Me Next today. This is going to be an absolutely fantastic conversation that I'm really motivated by, because of not only what you do, but how you do it, so thanks for being here.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I appreciate it.

Ashley :

So let's start at the very beginning. You went to medical school at NYU. You are now a fellowship trained orthopedic spine surgeon. Is this the road that you had planned for yourself back when you were eight, nine, 10 years old?

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I zigged and zagged a little bit. I was a good tinkerer as a kid. I thought engineering was my way and I did pretty well in high school, even won science fairs in engineering and got into a good college for me. And so I kind of redirected and went into med school. I took a year off, did some research actually at NYU, and that's how I ended up getting into NYU, because I was there. I always tell people you know it's just show up, just be there in person and doors open up. And they kind of did that way for me. I was applying to med school there, I was doing research there, they knew me, they liked me, so I got in.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

And then in med school I thought I was going to do obstetrics, actually high-risk pregnancies. I always wanted to do the challenging specialties, the surgical ones. You know that's kind of a tough specialty for a guy to be in these days and so I just couldn't seem to envision myself doing that. So I was a little lost at the end of third year until my last block of med school I did pediatric orthopedics and I saw them do pediatric spine surgery and immediately I looked at it I was like, oh, this is the coolest surgery. This is what I want to do Obviously had nothing lined up, did no research, had no letters of recommendation or anything. So I decided to take a year off and I did research in scoliosis and pediatric spine and it was a great year. I learned a lot. I did a lot of research.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

This is where I talk about mentorship was so valuable. These like pretty well-known surgeons. I'm still really close with some of them. I still am texting them. You know they're my friends now going on. God, what was that? 2008. So how many years is that? 17 years and um, it was just such a good relationship, you know, like unlike anything I'd had before that med school, where I identify with their personalities. These were unique people that could do pretty risky surgery and be pretty calm, you know, and it was just appealing to me and I got into residency at Jefferson. I worked under Alex Vaccaro, who was a pretty well-known spine surgeon and also, you know, a mentor.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

And after that I went to UCSF for fellowship, which was more complex spine and scoliosis, some PEDs, some adult, and then that finished up in 2016. And then I moved to Seattle where I was a professor for a couple of years and in Seattle a lot of complex surgery. But I really hated living in Seattle so I decided to move to LA and kind of gradually started my own practice and now we still embody a lot of that like academic feel in our private practice. We have a research component to what we do. We publish some papers. Where you know, pretty actively involved in outreach work, we do a yearly trip to maybe not every year to Africa for a charity where I do free scoliosis surgery in Africa. If anyone's interested in donating or supporting that cause, you know they can definitely reach out to us and I even, like you know, recruit my other spine surgeon friends to go with me.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

And then you know our entire practice. You know we don't really hire on. Indeed, I don't hire traditional MAs, I hire people out of college that are applying to PA school or med school because I really want to mentor people and for me mentoring is a lot of chasing them around. Did you get your application done? Yet Like coaching them.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I don't know how much mentoring is happening, how much harassment is happening, but you need a little push along the way. You got to get your application done. You got to check that box, you got to take that test. Along the way you got to get your application done, you got to check that box, you got to take that test. It's a lot of stuff. I remember it being just so tedious. And I remember there was a student that I mentored, a young attending in Seattle. His name's Casey and he was a med student. They told him he couldn't get into orthopedics and I said, well, I'll take no for an answer. And he did a bunch of research, wrote like 15 papers. He got into orthopedic residency. We stayed friends. Then I encouraged him to do his fellowship down here in Orange County and then they loved him there. Then he stayed on and now basically we're practicing 15 miles away from each other.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

Whoa cool story and he's going to go with me to Africa next year. So these relationships in healthcare are, I think are special, and the mentor mentee relationship is what keeps you going, because healthcare is a little bit of a mess in this country and you, you genuinely want to help people, but then the system's a little broken and long. If it's med school, god, it's so long. And I have I'll be very honest, I have some trauma from some of the parts of training. It wasn't really that good for your brain or your body or your health to be up that many hours working, didn't go to the gym, read healthy, all of those things. I kind of look back. I'm like, well, you know, now I'm going to be even more healthy than I might've been because of that. You know, even more healthy than I might have been because of that, and I think it's just really valuable. It's one of the reasons I signed up to do this podcast right away I was like this is perfect for me.

Ashley :

We appreciate it, because I think your story is just, it's so full, it's so full and it's so important to me for pre-health students to hear that once you're in medicine, it really it doesn't stop there, it just expands. Honestly, it grows, things just grow. And I love how you were describing relationships, because you talked about mentoring and about access and about those personal relationships in medicine. But you also talk about research, a lot of research, and that's a relationship with the capital M part of medicine. But you also talk about research, a lot of research, and that's a relationship with the capital M part of medicine. And these are the things that we love so much and these are things that why it's why we continue to do what we do. We love people, we love forming those relationships with them and then we also love the science behind it. We love the research. We love fixing things and solving problems and identifying those mysteries. So that was just such a great introduction.

Ashley :

I am excited to talk about your research. I am excited to talk about your relationship with teaching and how it has brought in a PA to your practice, which is just, oh, it sounds so fantastic the way that you two work together, and I really, really want to talk about your charity work in Africa because, well, for any students listening, I was a student at one point and I thought that it was what I was going to do with medicine. Right Is, I was going to take the medicine I learned and just change the world, and you're doing that in a very, very realistic way. So we're getting to all that. I can't wait to talk about it, but let's, let's first, let's just talk about a day in your life, which I'm sure is very multi-faceted.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

It depends on the day. Every day is a little different. Our surgery days, you know, we get up I usually start my day at five in the morning lift weights and exercise and get to the OR and then, you know, depending on the day, like yesterday we had a huge revision thoracic forward and pelvis revision, taking out hardware, putting in hardware, two liter blood loss, five hour surgery. That's one type of day Sometimes we're doing, you know, small procedures, outpatient surgery. The majority of what I tend to do on a daily basis is kind of those kinds of cases Patients do well. And in spine surgery there's a really big revolution that's happening where a lot of traditional spine surgery is being improved upon to the point that it's being done at surgery centers, it's being done outpatient and it's not crap surgery, it's good surgery that's being done with small incisions. I'm always against, you know, doing outpatient surgery where the surgery you're doing is kind of lousy but it's. This is actually really good surgery but short recovery times, great looking x-rays, improvement in the patient experience. So I'm interested in that side of it and in the last five years it's really been more about taking cases to the outpatient setting.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

Other days it's a lot of talking. I don't mind doing this podcast because I probably, on like a Wednesday, I've spent eight hours talking and listening, I hope. But I do a lot of consultations with patients. I ask them what's going on and I do a lot of teaching. We have 65-inch TVs in our office. I pull up the imaging. I say, look, this is the problem. This is not going to get better with an injection, or maybe it will. Or, you know, we got medication or this is a diagnosis and this is what the x-ray shows. And we do it over and over and over. And that's how I ended up teaching my staff. If they're interested in spine, just a few days in my office they'll learn how to read MRIs x-rays examine people. Mris, x-rays examine people, talk to them, even know what the different surgeries are, because it's pretty repetitive, you know.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

And then there's about a day a week that I spend doing administrative work. I'm more involved, I think, than I've been in the past, where I, you know, I have marketers, help, you know, make sure people know about our practice. But I'll go out with the marketer and make sure they know the doctor's available sometimes. But I'll go out with the marketer and make sure they know the doctor's available sometimes. I will do various billing meetings to see what's happening with billing and insurance and collections. I'll meet with my bookkeeper. I'll meet with my staff. I'll meet with Calvin. There's lots of things that we sort of are kind of on the to-do list, as I say. Well, we'll put it on the list. We have an administrative day. We tackle the list pretty systematically and that's how we're able to drive the practice forward. We have four offices now. We have this outreach trip that we're doing. We have research that we're still involved with, we're mentoring students. All of that sort of falls into that administrative time.

Ashley :

Administrative things. Thank you so much for describing that, because that's not something we really talk about a lot on the show, and I think that it's so important for not just pre-health students but also for patients to hear and to understand that, especially in private practice. It is a business and I think we say that a lot in terms of making money and making financial decisions, but it's also running the business that we can continue seeing our patients.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

People think running a business is like a bad word, like you're trying to make money off people, and I always want them to understand that I have almost run this practice into the ground a couple of times because I help everyone that comes in the door and not pay attention to the numbers or what's happening. And then you start looking at what actually came in and you're like, oh my God, we went, almost went bankrupt. We didn't collect anything. And so if you care about your patients and your practice and how you practice as a doctor or PA, you should care about the engine, which is the practice, and I think it's important and it's made me a better doctor, because for a while we were running like a factory. Just try to do as many patients as possible, many consults as possible. Sometimes you're seeing too many patients and it doesn't really give you that excellent patient experience. As a clinician or PA, you're not loving the experience of seeing patients like that, and so we actually slow it down.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

We really systematically look. We're going to do a 30% of our work is going to be charity work. Who cares if we get paid or not? We're going to do a certain percentage of hopefully cases where we do expect there to be some profit. And then we're going to also have clinic percentage of, hopefully, cases where we do expect there to be some profit, you know. And then, uh, we're going to also have clinic and a lot of our clinic. You know it's not really profitable but we want to make sure we do well enough on the surgeries that I can spend an hour and just chit chat with somebody if I need to. Who's anxious about surgery? What makes me a better doctor? But if we're so constricted, um, trying to just see as many patients as possible, then it ultimately erodes your reputation, I think.

Ashley :

I want to talk about your Wednesdays real fast, Talking and listening. A lot happens on Wednesdays. You perform these complex spine surgeries and they can be life-changing for patients, I'm sure, but they're also intimidating. How do you approach those conversations with people who are maybe very, very anxious about? So this is the talking element of your Wednesday what do you say to them? How do you give them comfort or reassurance?

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

You know, sometimes people are anxious and there's nothing you can really do. They have to just take time to process it and come to peace with it. So I usually give them the information in small doses. You know, like I'll say, oh listen, this is going to be surgical, it's probably going to be something big, but let's have you come back with a family member. I want to go into some detail. Other times it's something small, like hey, this is not going to be a big surgery, this is going to be an outpatient procedure.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

Most of the time when people are anxious, it's reassuring for them to know that, listen, plan A is going to be to avoid surgery and we're going to do this, this and this to try. But if it doesn't work out, plan B is a minimally invasive outpatient surgery and it's not something very technically challenging, and I can show you on a model here what I do. They actually are less anxious. Every patient has my cell phone number, at least the surgical patients. So I'm having a lot of phone calls with people afterwards and then we never take anyone to surgery until they've had sufficient time to ask their questions, come to peace with it, unless it's like a real emergency, you know, and that happens sometimes, Um, but we really, you know, and we've created a lot of content.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

If, if you know, people are interested, they can follow us on Instagram, advanced spine care ASCmd. They can also go to our website and we even have our own Spotify podcast. But I create a lot of content to help relieve some of that anxiety that I know people feel. And I think information helps, but, on the flip side, sometimes more information doesn't help. If you were afraid of flying and you had to sit down in the cockpit with the pilot and go over all the switches, I'm not sure it would make it better. And now they'd say go in the back, have your cocktail. So we try to strike a balance between those two. I answer the questions that they want answered, and in a lot of detail, but sometimes, if I feel like they're getting more and more anxious, I tell them to just you know, take a little break, you know, and and.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I let them know the difference between the complex spine surgery, the dicey stuff Versus the not dicey stuff, and I'll let them know. Okay, this one's a more risky surgery. These are the risks. This is my experience and we'll have longer, more detailed conversations with those patients. You just gotta be you, yeah, talk to people, yeah, tell them what you know how to do, tell them their experience and that trust will come, I think, with time. Sometimes they're not ready to hear what you have to say.

Ashley :

I love that you give them the education, but then you also give them the time and the space to process that, which is so important. Okay, that's the talking element of Wednesdays. Now the listening element and this is something that you've emphasized is giving patients a strong voice in their treatment plans, and I'm sure I mean, how often do you hear surgeons doing that? Right, that is, that seems very unique. Tell me a little bit about that.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

People with spine problems. When they're really complex they have the same disability scores as people with terminal cancer and their quality of life is affected in such a severe way. And in certain cases we can take a disabled patient and make them not disabled. But sometimes it's a huge surgery. Other times we can take somebody in severe pain and with a relatively small surgery completely change their life. But I have to figure out where they are a little bit.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I want to figure out is it pain that bothers you every day, keeps you from doing things you like to do? Is it intolerable? Is it keeping you from work? Is it pain? You know it doesn't get better with any non-surgical treatment. You have to really feel like you know and understand your surgeon, get to know them and you really have to understand the surgery. And I mean that means you really get it.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

Okay, the bone has slipped out of place. There's no way an injection is going to move it back into place. They've got to look at the imaging themselves. They've got to look at a model, they've got to really see it and then when all of those pieces come together, they can kind of make the decision. I think Usually I give people a bunch of information and they probably feel like they're drinking from a fire hose. They're overwhelmed, they go home and sometimes patients are like well, thanks for the information, doc, I'm not ready. I'm always like, that's fine, take your time, and then, like a month later, they'll call me and they'll be like we're ready now and they have to go through whatever process they're going through to feel like they're there and I think you know I'm half psychiatrist.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

Because of that you know no two people are exactly the same.

Ashley :

No, which is the beauty of medicine, but it's also the huge challenge of medicine, for sure. I love listening to how you're you're educating your patients and you're you're allowing them that, like I said, and you're allowing them that, like I said, that space to really understand and learn and appreciate their condition and what you're trying to do. Your love for teaching obviously doesn't just stop with your patients. You've already mentioned that you employ these incredible pre-health students who are looking towards becoming physicians, pas and other members of the healthcare field. You love to teach. You brought on a PA into your practice. Tell me how that has been, because I think so often when we bring in another physician, it's a colleague. When we bring in a PA, it's also a colleague, but at the same time as a PA. Speaking as a PA, I am expecting my supervising physician to be a teacher first and then a colleague second. Is that your experience?

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

Yeah, I think I mean, a lot of teaching is just done by observation. You just spend time with me and eventually I vomit out all the information I have that I've picked up over the years and you sort of absorb it. Information I have that I picked up over the years and you sort of absorb it. Um and so I think you know, just being in clinic, being in surgery, you just get it. But in the beginning I had a PA before Calvin moved to Hawaii, and uh, he just, he just told me he felt so overwhelmed in the beginning and I said, well, that's okay, I feel overwhelmed, you know. And then in surgery he told me that he felt like everything was moving in fast forward, that he would go to do something and I'd already done 10 steps in that amount of time and he couldn't understand why I was moving so fast. And I, and I tried to explain to him. I was like I've done this so much that there's so much muscle memory in what I do and I know when the dicey parts of the case are. You don't know that. I know that we're just exposing the muscle off the spine. We can go as fast as we want, but then other times I know to sort of push your hand away and say, okay, let me do this. This is the dicey part, um, and that just comes from watching.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I have watched a decade of surgery before I even really did surgery and I used to hate it, to be honest. I remember being like a med student and a resident and even a fellow. I did a lot of watching and I remember being like man, I just want to do the surgery. And then, now that I'm on the other side and been operating for 10 years, I love to watch people on the other side and been operating for 10 years. I love to watch people because you'd be surprised, the more you watch, the better you get. You sort of watch somebody who's really good, maybe when you're a trainee, and then you have that memory. If you watch them enough, you have it imprinted in your brain how they did the surgery and then magically, your hands just recreate it five years later. And it's true. I remember my first year as attending. It was in Seattle. You know I'm operating.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

Someone gave me the opportunity to see another surgeon who was in private practice 15 years, huge volume of surgery. I spent the day with him. He just casually was like, yeah, we've got 10 cases. I'm like what 10 cases? And I watched him just blow through these cases with so much efficiency and grace and I was a first year surgeon then and I think I came home the next day and I was 30% faster. Just watching him that one day. I was just like what am I doing in surgery? Why is this taking me so long? And I think it's like that as a PA too. I tell the PA this is going to take years for you to feel comfortable, and that's okay.

Ashley :

There's nothing wrong with that and that's why I love so much working with a supervising physician, because there are still things I regularly I encounter and I think, well, this is what I'm thinking, but I know there's something else there that I'm not thinking, so I'm going to run it by you to see what you have to say. And, of course, that's clinic OR. You're absolutely right there. He still surprises me with things in the OR which is, oh, it's just so much fun, and I am absolutely swiping your phrase the more you watch, the better you get, because, I mean, this is shadow me. Next, this is a podcast directed at people to just listen and watch and understand and learn about variety of areas in medicine. And it's so true the better you get, the more understanding you have.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

And I have all these moves and tricks where people will ask me how did you learn how to do this? And I like flashback to the 2016,. Me in Africa doing a case on a kid with 150 degree curve and I'm like blotchy or whatever you know. Whatever it is, whoever the attending was that. I just stared at, watched them put it together and it's true, it's definitely like that. In surgery, specifically spine, sometimes it's like you're putting together an erector set of screws and rods and hooks, especially some of the complex stuff. It's from a brain stimulation standpoint, I don't think there's some of the complex stuff. From a brain stimulation standpoint, I don't think there's anything better than complex spine. It just really activates a part of your brain that likes to solve problems, three-dimensional problems, and if you're mechanically inclined, like I've always been because I'm an engineer, I love to put screws and rods and hooks together. I mean it's like playing Legos.

Ashley :

I was thinking that, as you were talking, that's fabulous. No, it's the ultimate puzzle. I am so glad that you mentioned Africa. Let's talk about that. Volunteerism in medicine is something that I think people just have such incredible feelings about and they're so hopeful about, but oftentimes they get drawn into their careers and their current lives and and the burnout that's occurring right now in medicine and et cetera and et cetera. Tell us about what you're doing in Africa and then, how did you first get involved and where? What are the next steps with this? I'd love to hear this story.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

Oh sure I, um, I I went to Africa as a med student I was doing research, like I said, and there was a surgeon that gave a talk at a conference about doing charity surgery in West Africa at the Focus Hospital, professor Belachi and I ran right up to him after his talk I said, please take me with you. And he's like sure, oh wow, did a little Facebook fundraiser, covered my flights, subletted my apartment out and there I was with him and I didn't do any operating or anything like that, but I helped out a little bit in clinic. It was a great experience for me, cemented in my mind okay, this is the type of surgeon I'm going to be. I was a long way from it, but I knew that's what I wanted. And then I kept going back.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I went back in residency, I went back in fellowship, organized my own trips, same hospital, and then I I've done some different volunteer trips with other people and I've gotten some different experiences like different countries. It's kind of like traveling and the value of traveling, but like applied to your career, you know it, it makes you a little bit more resilient, surgeon. I think it makes you a little more um, adaptable to different situations, a little bit more resistant to stress in the operating room because you've been in some other situations that are a little wild. You know, I've been in the operating room where the power went out and everything stopped working. I've been oh my god, I've been in the city room where the power went out and everything stopped working.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I've been. I've been in the city, you know, where we weren't even we didn't have enough screws to put in the spine certain places. One of the reasons I like Africa is it's, even though it's an outreach hospital, the focus hospital it's. The quality of what we do is really high and we're able to produce data, research, publish, and so I think that's very appealing for surgeons. We don't want to go somewhere and then maybe do a controversial surgery, bad outcome, something like that. It wouldn't sit well with us. So I trust this place and I've been very loyal to it as a result.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

And then for many years I would sort of go on trips that were organized and funded by a third party, maybe by industry or by another surgeon. And this is the first year I'm organizing and funding the trip myself, getting the surgeons together, getting the money to the hospital, booking the flights, hotels, everything we're doing, I mean and it's a lot more gratifying. I think you know I'm leading the whole thing and I'm bringing my my surgeon friends a couple of them are pretty affluent and uh interested in this and I'm excited to do it. You know, um, and the cases we do are very extreme. You know the probably some of the most extreme pathology in the world and, uh, it's, it's great's great to be there and the surgeons there are really good now over the years. They're not surgeons that need a lot of training, but there's a collaboration there that I think is really valuable and fun. So hopefully I get to continue to do it.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

But I remember when I moved to LA I was with a group and I was talking about doing outreach work and they just couldn't understand why I would do outreach work and that was like the first motivation for me to start my own practice, like no, we've got to have a practice where we could do whatever we want. And then there was a year where we were like just dying financially. You know, our billing was kind of a mess and I did not go on my outreach trip. And that was the motivation to be like you know what? I need to make sure I get a handle on the administrative side and the financial side of this practice so that I can do the research, so that I can pay my PA and med students well and have them not be overworked, so that I can do the charity work. So if you're feeling bogged down with the administrative side, I'd say listen, this is what gives you the freedom to practice medicine the way you want is taking the bull by the horns.

Ashley :

We work so hard for what we do, and then you take that success and you pour it right back in to more success in just a little bit of a different way. I mean correcting pediatric spinal deformities for children in Africa.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

it's just the coolest thing I remember. I went on a trip with another surgeon, Tony Rinella, and he was giving a speech and he said it so simply. He said this is the best thing that I do, and that's exactly how I feel. I don't know that I do anything that's better than this.

Ashley :

You have built and established and continue to succeed in this private practice. You host students, you teach, you've published what? Over 50 peer review articles. Now I mean you travel to Africa and improve the lives of children. It's just fantastic to hear of these incredible success stories.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I didn't do any of it alone. Every paper had multiple co-authors on it. You know I think being collaborative has always helped me. You know I there's a million spine surgeons in town. I try to make friends with all of them because there's, you know I think I said this on another podcast is every surgeon's a little better at something. You know. Somebody might have a little better skillset at minimally invasive. Somebody might be a little bit of a better deformity surgeon. For a long time everyone was a better businessman than me, you know, and making friends with people in your specialty makes you better the relationships. Your career, I think, is more resilient to being killed by burnout. Let's say, if you've got friends in what you do, right.

Ashley :

It's relationships. It's like we talked about at the beginning. You started this career in a relationship as a research undergrad student and then you said take me with you and that's how you ended up in Africa. And it's just. Relationships are so important, Mentorships are so important. So Dr Verma and I did not have a chance to discuss a quality question, but he's about to give us some really great feedback. That would make a perfect interview question, and that question would be tell me about a time you faced a setback in your academic or clinical journey. How did that push you forward and what did you learn about yourself in the process? Let's see how Dr Verma poses and answers this question. Keep in mind that there's more interview prep, such as mock interviews and personal statement review over on shadowmenextcom. There you'll find amazing resources to help you as you prepare to answer your own quality questions.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

I want to give you a few words of motivation. I was not the best student. It was not all smooth sailing for me. There were a lot of roadblocks. I didn't get into med school my first try. I had to retake my MCAT. I'm not a good test taker. In residency it wasn't clear I would get into the fellowship I wanted. It wasn't clear I would get into the residency I wanted because I didn't have the best test scores.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

You just have to keep going. You have to never take no for an answer. If it's something you really want with your career, you have to say well, this is what I'm going to do, and eventually the doors will open. The people around you will just be like okay, well, he's not going to go anywhere, he's going to do this, and I think that's really true. I think I ended up here because I had a really clear vision in med school, finally, like this is exactly what I want to do, and there was nothing that could shake me from that. And so I think that's the most important thing for young people.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

They can get bogged down by the work, the rejection, the letters of recommendation. Bogged down by the work, the rejection, the letters of recommendation, the expense. There's a lot of barriers, but if you just never take no for an answer, you will end up where you want to be Maybe not the path you thought you'd take, but you will end up there. Not everyone's going to open the door up for you right away, and so for everyone out there, just stay motivated. I used to listen to motivational videos on YouTube in med school because I was down in the dumps my second year of med school studying all the time, not doing well on tests. So you know, try to stay motivated, stay positive.

Ashley :

Resilience and tenacity. They are two things that are so undervalued and just absolutely so important. Dr Verma, thank you so much. I appreciate you joining us tonight on Shadow Me Next.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

Absolutely. If anybody wants to learn more Advanced Spine Care, you can come check us out on our website. Ascmd is our Instagram and you can also call our office if you're in the Southern California area 562-732-4578. It was great chatting with you.

Ashley :

You too. Thank you so much.

Dr. Kushagra Verma:

My pleasure.

Ashley :

Thank you so very much for listening to this episode of Shadow Me Next. If you liked this episode or if you think it could be useful for a friend, please subscribe and invite them to join us next Monday, as always. If you have any questions, let me know on Facebook or Instagram Access. You want stories you need? You're always invited to shadow me next.

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Ashley Love

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