Ryan Padrez: Medical Director of The Primary School (Raise the Line)

Hi, I'm Shivani. Thanks for checking out our raise the line interview series.

In which me and my cohost osmosis chief Medical Officer Dr Rishi Desai explore how to strengthen our healthcare system with some amazing leaders in medicine, technology, education and government and they have some great advice for people starting careers in healthcare as well.

I hope you'll watch these highlights and then go listen to the full podcast interview wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Doctor Rhi Desai today on Race line.

I'm happy to be joined by Doctor Ryan Padres. Doctor Padres is a pediatrician and the assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford University's Division of General pediatrics.

He's also the medical director at the primary school where he cares for patients and teaches pediatric residents and medical students at Gardner Packard Children's Health Center.

Thank you so much Ryan for being with us today. It's great to be here with you, Rhi.

So Ryan, do you mind just telling us a little bit about your background and what led you to pursue a, you know, current healthcare specifically within pediatrics?

I think I was part of the, the class early on that was a more untraditional premedical student. I finished up really interested in health policy and economics.

And after undergrad, went to DC, thinking about Medicaid and our Medicare systems. And but it was there that sort of let the inspiration for me to get more engaged in this work from a clinical perspective.

And and I was really inspired by those clinical on the ground leaders that were contributing to the systems change and policy work that could provide those perspectives of taking care of patients.

And I thought those, those perspectives were really important and I could see myself trying to do that work. So I had to go back, do all my premed classes and found my way into medical school where I didn't fell in love with pediatrics for um I think the tendence of being able to help a child early on and the impacts of that long lasting change in health, I think really spoke to me and I um also really love working with parents.

So it's, that's one of the secrets of pediatrics that people need to. It's not just the kids, it's working with the parents as well, right?

You know, we have a lot of folks in the audience that aspire to health careers. Uh They probably look at a career like yours and say, hey, that sounds really interesting.

You know, I wouldn't have thought of myself in that role. Do you mind just giving advice on maybe how you got to where you're going or where you're at and where you're going.

Um for someone that may be just starting their, their journey. I think some of the our hardest health challenges um or maybe with some of the more most important questions that, that we need to address to help keep our community, healthy, kids, healthy, even adults.

Um I think are gonna be solved not within the walls of the clinic or the hospital is about how you sort of work in community in partnership with, with other organizations.

Um So that is something that II learned early on in my career uh around this importance of interdisciplinary work. And, and so that's something that I them that I want to hopefully maintain through my career.

And so I hope that there's more people aspiring in medicine that are going to medical school or, or, or graduating that, that want to keep the same interdisciplinary lens to their work.

They want work across with the education sector, social services, community nonprofits, even our nonhealth government programs.

Um I think my time at the primary school has only fueled that belief and fire around the importance of that sort of inter interdisciplinary work.

And I think that's how, that's how we're gonna really move the needle on some of these health outcomes that we want to change.

Thanks for watching this preview of raised line to hear the full interview, check out all of our podcasts and subscribe to the series, please go to osmosis.org/raised Line podcast or listen wherever you get your podcasts.