Prof Hariharan Seetharaman, Dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, shares his perspectives and plans
Since becoming Dean of UWI St Augustine’s Faculty of Medical Sciences in August 2023, Professor Hariharan Seetharaman has been striving to incorporate a “One Health” approach into the faculty’s teaching methods.
The United Nations defines One Health as “an approach to designing and implementing programmes, policies, legislation, and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes.”
By promoting this approach, Prof Seetharaman, known affectionately as “Prof Hari”, is working to give students the best possible chance to be well-rounded and capable of sufficiently serving an evolving healthcare system.
In a recent interview with UWI TODAY, he said medical professionals must take note that current global developments relating to health, technology, and the environment are important reminders that healthcare services do not exist in silos, and one must be able to grasp how other issues affect the care they provide.
He explained, “The [COVID-19] pandemic taught us that a virus can jump from an animal to a human, which means that veterinary health is important. Throughout the pandemic, we also saw how mental health was related to physical health.
“But understanding the environment is important too – as climate change can also cause problems for human health – as it provides conditions for the spread of diseases and affects people physically. Everybody should be climate conscious.”
Apart from ensuring the faculty’s curriculum better reflects an understanding of how all these issues correlate to health, Prof Seetharaman is encouraging the faculty’s many departments to collaborate on research and teaching exercises.
Looking further afield, the Dean said that while technological advancements continue to expand treatment options for ailments, and healthcare is becoming more digitised, it is important for students to understand that healthcare is still rooted in human interaction.
“I want to promote not only the technical aspects of medicine but also the social dynamics such as ethics and professionalism,” he said. “I tell all my students that the major thrust of medical care, in my view, is ethics, professionalism and soft skills, like being caring.”
He added, “In this era of technology, medical professionals cannot forget to be empathetic and understanding of the plight of patients by being kind to them.”
Serving as President of the Bioethics Society of the English-speaking Caribbean from 2015-2019, Prof Seetharaman is passionate about ethics and quality of care.
With specialisations in anaesthesiology and critical care, he credits his humble beginnings in India as inspiration for not only his approach to healthcare, but also his medical career.
Explaining that healthcare was not easily accessible in the community he grew up in, Seetharaman said this, coupled with his father’s encouragement, inspired him to pursue medical studies.
In 1982, he got accepted to his province’s public medical school and completed his MBBS in 1987, followed by his internship in 1988.
“In 1989, I went to join the small district general hospital in my town as a junior medical officer, and then for five years, I was a general medical practitioner,” he described. “I really remembered those five years because those were actually the times I really helped the marginalised people from rural India with lots of issues.”
“Medicine,” he said, “is a passion, and once you know that you are helping out other people, it’s a very rewarding experience.”
Between 1994 and 1998, he did a postgraduate specialisation in anaesthesiology and was a critical care trainee.
In 1999, he took up an opportunity to work at Barbados’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where he also taught as a non-academic employee and supported research, until he moved to Trinidad and Tobago in 2004 to become a full-time lecturer at UWI St Augustine.
Dedicated to his duties, Prof Seetharaman moved up the ladder to become a senior lecturer in 2007 and then a professor in 2010.
He has also served as the Head of the ICU at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (2009-2012), and the Director of Operating Rooms in the North Central Regional Health Authority (2012-2016).
In 2019, he became the Director of Graduate Studies and Research at UWI St Augustine, and ultimately, Dean of Faculty of Medical Sciences in 2023.
Even after becoming a professor in 2010, Seetharaman completed a PhD in Health Economics in 2015 to better understand the role that special interests and money play in healthcare.
When teaching and contributing to the development of teaching methods, he wants students to understand that medicine is ultimately about human care and not excessive profits.
“Economics is very important in healthcare because, when I was a practitioner in India, I never charged anyone below the poverty line. I felt very bad to take a fee from them because they only had coins which represented their daily earning,” he said.
With his wealth of experience, and understanding of healthcare in many different countries, Prof Hari continues to teach students about the value of ethics and empathy, which he also includes in his leadership style:
“For me, leadership is not bossing over people, but rather representing everybody in the institution and representing their voice. I try my best to seek the interest of everyone.”
While there are times I have to be assertive and make decisions independently because it is needed, I strive to not do things unilaterally as the faculty is diverse with many different interests.”
By fostering values of collaboration and care at the Faculty of Medical Sciences, he hopes that these inspire students to be dedicated to quality of care when they are practicing medical professionals.
“Everybody should be respectful of each other regardless of their titles in the medical field,” he said.
“For example, I can tell you that a nurse is the most important healthcare worker in an ICU because she spends the most time with a patient and takes the most intimate care of them.”
In doing so, he believes that there will be more socially conscious medical practitioners graduating from the faculty, and ones that will help Trinidad and Tobago’s healthcare system become more developed.
For more information on the Faculty of Medical Sciences and its educational opportunities, visit https://sta.uwi.edu/fms/.
