A Great Many Things More with Sirisha Narayana, MD
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What early experiences shaped Sirisha’s multicultural identity?
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As doctors, sometimes we see ourselves in our patients or we see our patients in ourselves. Sometimes this can be a good thing, a portal to empathy, but other times it can feel maladaptive, like it leads to bias and distraction in our work. I'm Emily Silverman, and this is The Nocturnists. Today's episode features Sarisha Narayana, a hospital medicine physician. In this story, Sarisha talks about her strong identity as a physician and how it collided with her other identities until one of her interns made a simple observation in the hospital. In the interview that follows, we continue to explore the topic of balancing our various identities and how we connect with patients differently based on them.
It was a pleasure talking to Sarisha, and I hope you enjoy her story and our conversation.
So after my parents got married in India, the first place they arrived in the U.S. was State College, Pennsylvania, where my dad was beginning a faculty appointment in computer science at Penn State. My mother did what any lonely, determined young woman in a strange new land would do. She found the phone book, looked up every single Indian name, and called each and every one of them, searching for friends. Pretty soon, we had built our own community of Indians in this small town. At my first birthday, a hundred people packed into my parents' tiny one-bedroom apartment to celebrate. Life eventually brought us to the Bay Area, where all of South Asia likewise seemed to have descended. I was surprised to see the number of brown-skinned, dark-haired kids at school.
It may have been because of this that I never had this classic identity crisis, so to speak. To me, I was just like all the other children around me. I spoke Telugu as well as English at home. My best friend spoke Hindi and English. I took South Indian classical music lessons. Half my friends were in Chinese school every Saturday morning. I went to India during summer vacation to visit my relatives. My friend Ziv went to Israel to see his. I was different, but all my friends were similarly different in their own cultural upbringing. I found security and honestly pride in my difference. I was uniquely American by being Indo-American. Now, of course, over time, my identity has changed. When I was little, I also strongly identified as an only child, probably because I wasn't very happy about it.
In fact, I once lied to my kindergarten teacher and told her I had a younger brother named Sandeep. I picked a name very true to my Indian heritage. I wanted to be as believable as possible. But, you know, obviously no one saw him because my mom left him alone at home a lot, all the time. That did not go over very well. When I went to med school in Chicago, I developed a deep association with being from the West Coast. And as I marched through my 20s, I saw myself more and more as a woman, which seems obvious, but was actually more of an evolution. And I think this was because I was dealing with life's nuances that seemed to align best with the strong female voices that were around me. Now, I still identify as being an Indian, but life has allowed me to choose who I want to be when I want to be that person.
How did moving from Pennsylvania to the Bay Area influence her sense of self?
Then I became a doctor. Very quickly, I started living and breathing this profession. And it's not just the years of training or the hours we spend at work. It's the language we speak. It's how we think, how we feel. And it just doesn't turn off that easily, right? It creeps into bizarre aspects of everyday existence. my unusual ability to eat standing up anywhere, my impatience with inefficiency, my instant conversational comfort with other doctors. Many of my other identities have now actually become secondary. One day, I was taking care of a patient whom I'll call Shukla Jane. Ms. Jane was admitted with a urinary tract infection, and she was pretty confused.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What early experiences shaped Sirisha’s multicultural identity?
0:00–3:54
2
How did moving from Pennsylvania to the Bay Area influence her sense of self?
3:54–6:52
3
When and why did she begin to identify more strongly as a woman and a doctor?
6:52–10:34
4
What was the impact of the intern’s “Auntie” greeting on patient care?
10:34–14:06
5
How does Sirisha define the “Amma factor” and why is it challenging?
14:06–17:20
6
In what ways does cultural identity affect delivering hope to patients?
17:20–21:07
7
How does she balance multiple identities while maintaining clinical objectivity?
21:07–25:48
8
What lasting lessons does Sirisha share about empathy and cultural humility in medicine?
25:48–29:30