Lakshmi Chauhan, MD, says her clinical mission is defined by “traditional bedside medicine,” but her career has been anything but traditional.
She earned her medical degree in India and completed her residency there, then worked in a remote part of eastern Nepal. After coming to the United States, she went through internship and residency a second time, then provided primary care in rural Colorado.
Now, seven years after an infectious-disease fellowship on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Chauhan is an assistant professor in the CU Division of Infectious Diseases, where she is associate division head of clinical affairs and a noted researcher.
Yet even at a top academic medical center, Chauhan’s background of treating patients in places far from big cities, often without access to sophisticated tests or specialists, continues to inform the way she provides care.
“I had to practice for many years with limited resources, so I have found a way to rely on my clinical skills,” Chauhan says. “That experience has expanded my ability to work out complex diagnostic issues by combining a detailed history taking along with advanced diagnostics, which is a benefit of modern medicine. Invariably I wind up spending a lot of time with patients, as many of the infectious disease cases can be diagnostic challenges and need an extensive review of information. This type of bedside medicine is the most enjoyable aspect of my medical career. and has become an innate part of how I practice.”
Her passion for providing patient-centered infectious disease care helps explain why Chauhan is among 21 CU Department of Medicine faculty members in the inaugural class of the department’s Clinical Excellence Society (CES).
→ More profiles of Clinical Excellence Society inductees
“It’s a real honor for me to be part of this impressive group of excellent clinicians,” Chauhan says. “I feel like, as clinicians, our best recognition is when we heal a patient. It’s the happiest moment when a patient thanks you. There’s nothing much more that you need. But being recognized by your peers for what you do, and for people to tell you that they value your clinical expertise, is really meaningful.”
‘Deeply compassionate’
Chauhan practices in the infectious disease clinic at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, with a focus on management of infections in immunocompromised people, including transplant and cancer patients and those with HIV and neurological infections. Chauhan also sees patients at a nonprofit HIV community outreach clinic in Denver.
→ Chauhan named to 5280 Magazine Top Doctors list for 2024
In nominating Chauhan for CES induction, former infectious disease division head Eric Poeschla, MD, wrote that she “is truly one of those few physicians I would want called to my beside if I was flat on my back in an ICU, febrile, and no one could figure out what was going on. She has a deeply compassionate, patient way with patients, and has been devoted to care of the underserved, including patients with HIV.”
And a patient wrote that Chauhan’s care was “exceptional with her kind, patient manner, incredible knowledge, and thorough explanation of my disease and treatment. I had many medical diagnoses, and I really became scared and confused about all the life changes I needed to make to be healthy, but Dr. Chauhan patiently addressed them all.”
Early years in south Asia
In India, medical school begins right after high school. At age 18, Chauhan knew she wanted to “do something that made a difference in people’s lives. And my uncle and aunt were doctors, so that was an influence. Medicine seemed like a natural fit for me.”
After med school and residency, Chauhan and her husband went to work at a hospital in a remote community in Nepal, where she was an internal medicine attending physician at the medical school. She taught medical students and residents, something she remains passionate about today. Resources there were minimal, she says, and most specialists were hundreds of miles away in the capital, Kathmandu.
“You learned to care for people with very basic infrastructure,” she says. “You’d have a CT scanner and maybe one MRI that worked part of the time. But the rest was all based on your clinical judgment, and we had to use whatever medications were available.”
Also, Chauhan says, “Health care systems in that part of world are not funded the way they are over here. People pay out of their own pocket, and if someone couldn’t afford a treatment, they didn’t get it. There was a lot of rationing of care.”
‘A very different experience’
Then Chauhan and her husband came to the U.S. when he landed a research position in Cincinnati. That meant another internship and residency for Chauhan. She then moved to rural northeast Colorado, where she spent three years providing primary care at a critical access hospital.
“You were 70 miles away from the big hospital,” she says. “We had one cardiologist, but nobody else specializing. I was back doing my best to take care of people with the resources we had.”
Chauhan says practicing in a small town is “a very different experience. Everybody knows everybody. I came to know my patients so personally that I still have those connections. Sometimes those patients will come to CU Anschutz and they still remember me after 10 years. It’s valuable to think about how you can be a part of so many people’s lives.”
After three years at the rural hospital, Chauhan decided that she wanted to “do a little bit more” with her career and came to CU Anschutz in 2015 for an infectious disease fellowship. “I was always interested in underserved populations and global health, and infectious diseases seemed like a natural extension of that. I’m able to treat diseases which people are afflicted by in other parts of the world.”
Physicians at heart
Chauhan’s research interests include clinical trials on therapeutic agents for emerging infections, understanding the role of immunocompromised states in how various infections present themselves, and exploring potential biomarkers for diagnosing various types of infections based on immune response.
In treating patients, she’s now able to take advantage of the extensive resources and multidisciplinary approach available at a major academic medical center. But she still relies on patient interaction and medical judgment honed by her past experiences.
Chauhan sees the department’s CES program as significant “because it means that this institution values a good clinician, which is the basis of every physician community. After going through med school and all this training, we are physicians at heart. Research and everything else comes along with it, but primarily we are all physicians.”
Photo at top: Lakshmi Chauhan, MD (center) is inducted into the CU Department of Medicine's Clinical Excellence Society by department Chair Vineet Chopra, MD, MSc (left) and John Carethers, MD, vice chancellor for health sciences at the University of California, San Diego, at a ceremony on February 8, 2024. Photo by Paul Wedlake for the CU Department of Medicine.
