(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone, Steve Adubato, we kickoff the program with Dr.

Nitika Dabas, who is a cardiac electrophysiologist at Englewood Health, one of our high... Excuse me, one of our healthcare partners, good to see you, doctor.

- So nice to be here, thank you.

- For those of us who do not know exactly what a cardiac electrophysiologist is, please explain.

- Sure, this is one of my favorite things to explain, and the way I describe it to my family first, and then, what I started using with patients is that I'm an electrician for the heart, so there are plumbers for the heart that put in stents and get rid of blockages, and then, there are the electricians that take care of cardiac circuits.

- Why and when did you become fascinated by this field of medicine?

- I... So when I was a medical student, or rather, internal medicine resident, I rotated through quite a few cardiology rotations because I was really interested in the field.

EP, what we call electrophysiology, is not as well known or as talked about as some of the other cardiac specialties, and I was really lucky to have incredible mentorship.

Some attendings who took me under their wings to show me, like, exactly what they do.

And so, with electrophysiology, it's a procedural or surgical field as well as a clinical field, and a lot of the things we do and the rhythm issues we deal with are very cerebral, so it was really interesting, and- - Hold on one second, one second, "very cerebral," you connected the head and the heart, that threw me off.

- Yeah, so it's just... It's not just, you know, you see something, and then, you go in and fix it, we actually have to look through how the heart is beating, how the electrical system conducts through it, then analyze exactly what is wrong, sometimes we even have to, during our procedures, perform different maneuvers to manipulate the circuits to see exactly where the problem is wrong, and so, I meant cerebral in that it's just... It's challenging, it's... There's this very intellectual part of it, but then we also get to fix it, which is really exciting.

- Cerebral on the part of the clinicians.

- Yes.

- Just... Thank you for clarifying that.

- Sorry for not.

(laughs) - That's okay, I'm curious about this.

In talking to our producers, you shared this and I'm shocked by this.

"Less than 10% of fellows pursuing cardiac electrophysiology are women."

Why so few?

- I think the number is, like, 6%.

- 6%.

- There's 6%, I'm one of 6% of female electrophysiologists.

- How do you explain that?

- Yeah, I think there's a few reasons.

In medical school these days actually, the number of women are higher than the number of men, but as we get into subspecialties and subspecialty fields, that number trickles down, and so, just from going from internal medicine to cardiology, it becomes, again, a male-dominated field, where... I don't know the exact number of female cardiology fellows, but that becomes... Even when we become more specialized, much less as we go into electrophysiology.

The journey to become an electrophysiologist is about 12 years.

- Hold on just one second, could you stay on that?

A graphic's gonna come up, Tomorrow's Physicians, we're doing a series on medical school training, tomorrow's physicians, the short of physicians, the graphic will be up right now.

Describe what tomorrow's physicians who choose to go into your field are facing in medical school, residency and beyond, go ahead.

- So there's a... So at this point in our lives, we've all had a goal, right?

To get to medical school, to become a doctor, and now, we are incorporating our personal goals as well, having a family, making time for family, work-life balance, all of those things, and so- - How about the money?

- Money's a factor, but there's... You know, you should go- - No, the medical medical school, I mean.

- I mean medical school.

- Oh, that... Yeah, well, the cost of medical school, and then, being able to repay those loans, yes, definitely.

- Sure, go ahead.

I'm sorry for interrupting, go ahead.

- No, no, that's okay.

So what I think we're coming across at this decision, whether we wanna specialize and subspecialize, you know, yes, having loans is definitely a factor, but it's also... In my field, for example, we have radiation exposure, and it's not really talked about well, and radiation safety is not explained well, despite the fact that all of our procedures are very cognizant of radiation exposure and we do everything to minimize them.

So that's one factor, the other factor is probably that, especially for women, work-life balance, being able to have children, being able to ask for what we need as women in a male-dominated field, you know, time off, being able to adjust our schedules as needed, et cetera, I don't think that's talked about well enough, and then, not having role models, not having visibility of other females in the field, I luckily had three, and I- - Three role models?

- Three female electrophysiologists who helped train me, and showed me that, yes, you can have it all, you can have kids, you can have a family, you can go to work, you can exercise, and you can be a really good doctor, and I think that's what my goal is, is to if not convince people to go into my field, but to explain that this is a really fun, exciting field that we should be a part of.

- Let me ask you this in time we have, the technology around pacemakers, defibrillators, how much better is that technology today than just, say, 10 years ago?

- I'll show you.

- Sure.

- So I have hundreds of these all around me, but these are these new pacemakers that I implant.

This is the whole thing.

(laughs) - That's it?

- Yeah, it's, like, the size of a AAA battery, and there's no cables in it, there's no cut under the shoulder, everything is done percutaneously through the groin, and we put these in the top chamber, bottom chamber, and they talk to each other.

This is the whole thing.

So for patients who are very athletic or who, you know... Or wanna play golf or those types of things, they... There's no limitation with arm movement anymore, the batteries last longer, and that's just... This just is in, like, the last two years, that this dual chamber system came out as a pacemaker.

- So the practice in your field has changed as the technology has changed?

- Absolutely.

- The skills... Wow.

- Yeah, absolutely, which is really exciting, and it's only going to continue to advance.

Even with ablations, ablations about 10 years ago, you- - Tell everyone what that is.

- Oh, sorry, an ablation is a procedure that we do where we bring catheters inside the heart through the veins in the groins, and we get rid of these abnormal circuits, so most commonly, you've probably heard of an atrial fibrillation ablation, because AFib is the most prevalent heart rhythm disease in the country, and so, even with those ablations, probably 10 years ago, they used to take, like, six to eight to 10 hours, and now, they are much more efficient, they're safer, and that's just because of the development of technology.

- Dr.

Dabas, I cannot thank you enough, to you and your colleagues in your field and also at Englewood doing important work, thank you so much, doctor, we appreciate it.

- Of course, thank you so much for having me.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by EJI, Excellence in Medicine Awards.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

New Brunswick Development Corporation.

Johnson & Johnson.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

And by NJM Insurance Group.

Promotional support provided by ROI-NJ.

And by Insider NJ.

- The EJI Excellence in Medicine Awards was established in 1939, shining a light on New Jersey's health care leaders.

Current awards include the Excellence in Medicine, Research, Medical, Education and Community Service.

EJI also funds annual scholarships to medical, dental, pharmaceutical and physician assistant students throughout the state.

Learn more at EJIAwards.org.