Fellow of the Month: Meet Nida Khan, MD

Fellows Forum: Hi everybody, welcome to today’s episode of the Fellows Forum podcast. Today we have another episode of our Fellow of the Month series, and our Fellow of the Month for November is Dr. Nida Khan. Dr. Khan, thank you so much for coming on today.

Meet Nida Khan, Fellow of the Month

Nida Khan, MD: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Fellows Forum: To start off, would like to introduce yourself and share a little bit about yourself?

Dr. Khan: Yes, definitely. I am currently a second-year PGY-2 Medical Oncology and Palliative Care Fellow at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. I have always loved oncology as well as palliative care, so I’m really grateful to be able to do both of those while here in Columbus. I grew up on the East Coast in New York, and I did most of my training on the East Coast before moving to the Midwest. In my free time I like spending time with family and friends.

Fellows Forum: Awesome. Would you like to tell us a little bit about your journey in medicine and why you decided to become a physician?

Dr. Khan: For sure, I’d love to. I think my journey in medicine was kind of a long time coming. I did have a little bit of a non-traditional path. I went to college in New York City, and at that time, medicine wasn’t really on my mind. I actually was an anthropology major, and I wanted to work in diplomacy and international affairs and things like that. After I graduated college, I worked at the United Nations (UN) for a couple years and did some non-governmental organization (NGO) work, which I loved. It was super rewarding.

Then towards the end of my time there, I decided that I wanted to make a career shift, and I decided to switch to medicine. A lot of that was inspired by the women’s health work I did during my NGO work, and I kind of used that as a driving force to get involved in medicine and apply to medical school. I then went to medical school at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then came back to New York for my internal medicine residency. And now I’m here in my medical oncology and palliative care fellowship in Columbus.

Fellow Forum: That’s really amazing to hear about. I’m sure a lot of the experiences you’ve had probably contributed to pursuing a palliative care fellowship. Would you like to tell us a little bit more about why you decided to pursue that path?

Dr. Khan: I’d love to, and yes, you’re right. A lot of my experiences in my prior work and a lot of the patient exposure rotations I had in med school and internal medicine residency really informed my decision to do both medical oncology and palliative care. I would say my love of it really started in med school. Serendipitously, a lot of my rotations ended up being at the cancer center that was attached to Temple University in Philadelphia. I had the ability to work with patient populations in pretty much every type of solid cancer or malignant hematologic cancer.

At the same time, I saw that many of these folks had long-term morbidities that required a lot of supportive care and symptom management, and in general, a lot of advanced care planning and goals of care discussions. Both of those aspects combined really informed my desire to do both medical oncology and palliative care, and this was reinforced throughout my residency experience.

Fellows Forum: That’s amazing. Going into your work a little bit more, what are some of your areas of interest and research areas that you’ve focused on?

Dr. Khan: That’s a great question. I am definitely more interested in the solid oncology sphere and then also in the supportive oncology sphere. Right now, my focus is mainly in thoracic and head and neck cancers. Both of those cancers have high morbidity, especially head and neck, and there are a lot of long-term morbidities that these folks deal with.

From the palliative side, I’m really interested in focusing on symptom management for these patients. They have a lot of cancer-related pain. A lot of these folks, especially head and neck folks, go through very intense radiation regimens, and they end up with xerostomia, dermatitis—all these kinds of long-term morbidity effects. I’d really like to look more at these side effects research-wise. I’m very interested in health systems research. I’ve been doing some research looking at how palliative care referrals in our cancer center work, as well as looking at how we can better deliver palliative care to our cancer patients.

Fellows Forum: It’s such an important research space. So, what are you planning to pursue after your fellowship?

Dr. Khan: I’d like to have an opportunity to combine both medical oncology and palliative care and continue maintaining both skill sets. I definitely love the academic world and the collegiality of that. I’m hoping to stay in academia and work in the head and neck or thoracic cancer sphere, while also having the opportunity to deliver palliative care and symptom management to cancer patients overall. That’s what my hope is, going forward.

Fellows Forum: Awesome. As we wrap up, the one question we ask everybody at the end of these interviews is what is your favorite part of being a fellow?

Dr. Khan: That’s a great question, and it’s hard to pick just one. I’d say fellowship is definitely a huge learning curve but having the ability to embrace that is really great. I love having the collegiality, and all the folks—your co-fellows, your attendings, your mentors—are just super collegial and willing to learn and get to know everyone. I think that’s probably been the best part. Then of course, I love having the opportunity to develop relationships with patients and hone my craft that I’m going to be doing for many, many years moving forward. So, that’s what I would say.

Fellows Forum: Amazing. Well, it’s been great to hear about your fellowship experience today. It’s also been great to work with you the last couple years and hear all about your research and interests. We look forward to doing more. So, thank you so much for coming on today to tell us all about this.

Dr. Khan: Thanks for having me.

More About Dr. Khan

Nida Khan, MD, is a Medical Oncology and Palliative Care Fellow at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. She is passionate about treating cancer and cancer-related symptoms with a focus in thoracic malignancies. She also has specific interests in global health and education as applied to palliative care and oncology. Dr. Khan has taken part in several global health initiatives, including working with palliative care and oncology patients in Uganda.