July 7, 2020

This week’s Up-and-Comer is Dr. Adil Shaikh, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician, or physiatrist, with Avera Medical Group and a clinical associate professor at USD.

Name:  Dr. Adil Shaikh

Age:  40

Hometown:  Toronto, Canada

What brought you to Sioux Falls?

Sioux Falls offers less stress and a slower pace of life. Coming from Toronto, it is also a more affordable place to live. In comparison, we have a great public school system here, and my specialty area is far less saturated in this area. Thanks to a great recruitment team seven years ago, my family had a very easy transition here.

What keeps you in Sioux Falls?

I really enjoy working with my partners. Avera has been a great fit – and I would be hard-pressed to find a better health system. My family is happy living here, and the Harrisburg school system is excellent.

What’s your favorite thing about your job?

The people I work with. I have an excellent nurse, Annette, in clinic and great staff that I work with in the hospital environment. Our inpatient rehab unit at Avera McKennan has been around for several decades, providing high-quality, compassionate care that I am proud to be a part of. Our senior leadership at Avera is very in tune with our medical group and takes what we have to say to heart. I also enjoy doing procedures and injections, as well as teaching medical students, residents and fellows about different diseases that they are usually not exposed to in their training.

How did you get connected to your industry?

I always wanted to be a doctor. Both my parents are physicians and so is my only sibling. Health care came naturally. Initially, I wanted to be a surgeon like my mother – and while I enjoyed surgeries, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be on call and come to the hospital in the middle of the night for the rest of my life. I knew a few individuals who had suffered strokes that would have really benefited from working with a rehab physician – physiatrist. It is a lesser known specialty that provides an enormous benefit to people that have pain, injury or disability.

Describe Avera in three words.

Compassionate. Catholic. Business.

What’s your favorite way to give back to your community?

I firmly believe in supporting our community and encourage everyone to support causes important to them in whatever way they can. Regardless of outward support or staying behind the scenes, we all have the ability to make an impact in our own way.

What’s one business you’d like to see in Sioux Falls that isn’t here now?

More ethnic restaurants – Indian and Middle Eastern – and shops would be great, and I would love to have IKEA, Trader Joe’s and an indoor water park with a beach in Sioux Falls.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

In addition to my medical degree, I am working on my master’s degree in health services administration, so from a professional standpoint, I would like to continue to build upon that and take on more leadership responsibilities. I also desire to find efficiencies that can be applied to health care in the private, local and state levels.

From an academic standpoint, I hope to continue helping educate residents and medical students, as well as potentially be involved in research studies.

Personally, I am committed to helping people realize the issues that our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community faces regularly and help make real, lasting change. There is an incredible amount of information at our disposal today and with that comes misinformation. I want to help educate the public on how to distinguish between the two so that they can be informed when fighting for what is right and just.