Seilim Sheikh, Do
Interviewee: Selim Wahhab Sheikh, DO
Interviewer: Crystal Bauer
Date: October 15, 2020
“At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, there was nothing in terms of actual in-person learning for the medical students and a lot of residents,” explains Dr. Selim Wahhab Sheikh, an assistant clinical professor at the Ohio State University (OSU) Wexner Medical Center. “It was difficult and challenging especially trying to get as much clinical experience without actually having them see patients,” he says.
As faculty for the family medicine residency program for the musculoskeletal rotations, Dr. Sheikh had first-hand knowledge of COVID’s impact on his students’ medical education. Despite this impact, or because of it, he has praise for the resident physicians who continued to learn and excel during the pandemic.
For some of his own patients, he developed a digital approach to help them manage their pain crises without actually treating them in-person. Yet some of his patients, who normally received manual therapies, were hospitalized because they were in pain crises. He adds that many osteopathic physicians in the U.S. were able to treat COVID positive patients in the hospitals at the peak of the pandemic and achieve some good outcomes.
Today, Dr. Sheikh is serving on a post COVID surge population health recovery work group that is working with the leaders of the OSU Health Plan and medical center leaders. The group is concerned with developing value-based care systems in the context of how the pandemic has affected various patient populations. He believes that the pandemic has placed a spotlight on family medicine and family physicians within the U.S. healthcare system. More local and regional government officials have seen what family medicine can do during a crisis by really stepping up to the challenges.