Bharat Kumar, MD, MME, FACP, FAAAAI, RhMSUS, is a clinical assistant professor of internal medicine in the Division of Immunology, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City. Before assuming the role of physician editor, he was a member of the ACR Board of Directors (beginning in 2020). After attending college at the University of Pennsylvania, he went to Saba University School of Medicine and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Kentucky. He arrived in Iowa in 2014 and completed fellowships in both rheumatology and allergy/immunology in 2017, as well as a master’s degree in medical education and certification in musculoskeletal ultrasonography. His clinical interests include the intersection of autoimmunity and immunodeficiency, musculoskeletal ultrasonography, and ocular inflammatory diseases. As the associate program director for the rheumatology fellowship training program, he is also driven by a desire to improve the quality of medical education as well as the value of clinical work for both patients and practitioners. Outside the clinic, Dr. Kumar has a keen interest in medical journalism, quality improvement and humanism, and is the Arnold P. Gold Foundation’s Humanism-in-Research Associate Editor.
My children were playing in the car the other day and pulled open the glove box. Inside, they found a brown paper bag with my last name “KUMAR” in black Sharpie and a red sticker that read, “Do not lose. No replacements available.” It wasn’t long before the kids tore that bag apart to find…
In this episode of his monthly video series for The Rheumatologist, physician editor Dr. Bharat Kumar talks about isolation and its impact on our patients with rheumatic disease, and the rheumatologist’s role in combating it.
At first, there was an incomprehensibly loud explosion. And out of that explosion, about 4.5 billion years afterward, emerged the world’s first rheumatologist. Only a few notable things have happened between these two events, but the most important dynamic has been the continuous expansion of our universe. If the speculations of many cosmologists are correct,…
In this episode of his monthly video series for The Rheumatologist, physician editor Dr. Bharat Kumar talks about dreams—their importance and the role of the rheumatologist and rheumatology professionals in helping patients fulfill their dreams.
The world didn’t end on Jan. 1, 2000. The Y2K bug didn’t crash airplanes and liquidate bank assets. We were, overall, hopeful for the future—a new millennium full of futuristic visions of a techno-utopia. Fast forward a quarter of a century and we now live in that technologically advanced age that once seemed so far…
In this episode of his monthly video series for The Rheumatologist, physician editor Dr. Bharat Kumar talks about the tenacity of hope.
It’s dark. It’s cold. And it’s 5 p.m. here in Iowa. If that sounds rather bleak to you, I wouldn’t blame you. But to Stella, my 12-year-old canine companion, it’s a wonderland. She’s half-Shetland sheepdog and half-American Eskimo, so the colder and snowier it is, the more she feels at home. And although I do…
Rheumatic diseases are intrinsically linked to environmental conditions. With a constantly changing environment, how can rheumatologists adapt to the challenges of global climate change, pollution and other environmental threats? The Environment + Genetics Tamiko Katsumoto, MD, a clinical associate professor in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., emphasizes the…
I read a lot of essays and, believe it or not, I’ve been known to write a few on occasion as well. The majority of them kind of linger in the back of my mind and are slowly forgotten. The ones that stick with me tend to be the application essays that I scrutinize every…
In this episode, Dr. Bharat Kumar offers some advice to aspiring rheumatologists on how to present themselves in the best light possible in their application essays. He also offers a sneak peek at the rest of the compelling content in the November issue of The Rheumatologist.