"Wher­ev­er the art of med­i­cine is loved, there is love of hu­man­i­ty."

It may have been a fa­mous say­ing of Hip­pocrates, but it is al­so the mot­to by which Dr Joel Teelucks­ingh lives.

Ear­ly life

Dr Teelucks­ingh was born to Rev Daniel Teelucks­ingh and school teacher Joyce­lyn Teelucks­ingh in Ch­agua­nas.

As many may know, his fa­ther was al­so an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor from 1991 to 2000.

To this day, he re­mains proud of his fa­ther's con­tri­bu­tion.

"The love for hu­man­i­ty, jus­tice, fair­ness. He had prin­ci­ples and he was a very prin­ci­pled man, he still is a very prin­ci­pled in­di­vid­ual."

He said the com­bi­na­tion of pos­i­tive at­trib­ut­es pro­pelled him to be the man he is to­day.

"There was al­ways a deep de­sire by both my par­ents to help oth­ers and to serve and that love for ser­vice and help­ing the com­mu­ni­ty, help­ing hu­man­i­ty in gen­er­al, those val­ues had been in­stilled in me from very young."

His fam­i­ly was al­so firm­ly en­trenched in the Pres­by­ter­ian Church, not on­ly his fa­ther but his un­cles and cousins are rev­erends as well.

But re­li­gion wasn't the be-all and end-all of their dai­ly lives.

"It was a re­laxed at­mos­phere. It is not that you al­ways had to be in church but nat­u­ral­ly so, you grav­i­tat­ed to­wards church ac­tiv­i­ties, it was en­joy­able."

He said the fam­i­ly was al­so ac­tive in sports.

Teelucks­ingh's ed­u­ca­tion

Prayer and sport aside, the ma­tri­arch of the fam­i­ly en­sured that the chil­dren main­tained an ed­u­ca­tion.

Teeelucks­ingh has an old­er broth­er, Jerome, who is a lec­tur­er in his­to­ry at UWI (Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies) and a sis­ter, An­gel­i­ca Rachel, who is a High Court Judge in the East­ern Caribbean.

He start­ed his jour­ney in­to med­i­cine at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege in Ch­agua­nas where he ven­tured in­to the Sci­ences.

He ad­mit­ted that he wasn't sure he want­ed to go in­to med­i­cine even af­ter get­ting a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship in 1996 and start­ed work­ing at the Mt Hope Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex.

"But when we start­ed in­ter­act­ing with pa­tients, re­al­i­sa­tion dawned, I think I had an epiphany, it is some­thing some peo­ple would call a mo­ment of clar­i­ty. So when we start­ed in­ter­act­ing with pa­tients and see­ing the dif­fer­ence that could be made in the lives of peo­ple, apart from just the med­i­cine but the doc­tor/pa­tient con­nec­tion, the re­al­i­sa­tion dawned up­on me at that point that this was some­thing I found end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. It sparked a fire with­in my soul at that point that this was my call­ing."

Af­ter com­plet­ing uni­ver­si­ty, he got a job at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for a few years, then went to the Unit­ed King­dom (UK) for spe­cial­i­sa­tion in in­ter­nal med­i­cine, di­a­betes and en­docrinol­o­gy.

The work be­gins

He spent five years there be­fore re­turn­ing home to work in the pub­lic sec­tor as a spe­cial­ist.

While he con­tin­ued serv­ing in the pub­lic sec­tor, he al­so opened up a pri­vate prac­tice in Ch­agua­nas.

One of his main mantras when deal­ing with his pa­tients is not just writ­ing pre­scrip­tions but to prop­er­ly ex­plain to them the na­ture of the prob­lem.

"I've found them to be very re­cep­tive, they have been will­ing to lis­ten."

He ex­plained that when do­ing a con­sul­ta­tion he likes to have a rel­a­tive in the room, es­pe­cial­ly with el­der­ly pa­tients, to get them in­volved in the process.

"Usu­al­ly a lot of these en­coun­ters is to gain trust ini­tial­ly. So that the doc­tor-pa­tient bond, that re­la­tion­ship is strength­ened. By the time they leave the pa­tient is more like­ly to take their med­ica­tions, is more like­ly to ad­here to lifestyle ad­vice, they trust the doc­tor now so they are more like­ly to re­turn as well."

He said he al­ways tries for his pa­tients to leave "sat­is­fied."

In fact, he said, a lot of his pa­tients "have be­come fam­i­ly."

Ad­mit­ted­ly, as a doc­tor there are chal­lenges.

Teelucks­ingh said keep­ing peo­ple away from "herbal doc­tors" is one of them as well as deal­ing with pa­tients who have googled di­ag­no­sis and reme­dies.

He al­so ex­pressed the hope that re­sources would be more read­i­ly avail­able to pa­tients in the pub­lic health care in­sti­tu­tions.

Teelucks­ingh is al­so the sci­en­tif­ic ad­vis­er to the Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T.

Be­sides that, he does lec­tures for doc­tors and peo­ple around the coun­try. This is his way of giv­ing back.

His sat­is­fac­tion al­so comes when peo­ple come back to him to say they have learned some­thing from him.

"One of the key things about a good doc­tor is that he must al­so be a good teacher."

His ad­vice to the pub­lic

As part of his teach­ings, he al­so ad­vis­es peo­ple on how to main­tain good health, es­pe­cial­ly with the plagues of di­a­betes and oth­er lifestyle dis­eases.

"Like every­thing else, lifestyles re­mains the pil­lar. Di­et, ex­er­cise, stop­ping smok­ing, lim­it­ing al­co­hol and re­duc­ing stress."

He rec­om­mend­ed chat­ting reg­u­lar­ly with your doc­tor and do­ing check-ups.

The doc­tor said in this time of COVID-19 fam­i­lies should take the time to ex­er­cise to­geth­er, and once re­stric­tions are lift­ed, con­tin­ue do­ing so.

From a gov­ern­men­tal lev­el, he said, there must be a sys­tem in place to en­sure that med­ica­tions are avail­able, blood tests and scans and freely avail­able and that the wait­ing times to ac­cess these are re­duced.

But, "pre­ven­tion is re­al­ly the watch­word when we are think­ing about these NCDs (Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases)."

He said dis­eases that would typ­i­cal­ly af­fect old­er peo­ple are now af­fect­ing the younger gen­er­a­tion.

"So fo­cused ed­u­ca­tion in schools" is need­ed.

Ask the Doc­tor

An­oth­er part of his role in ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic. Teelucks­ingh start­ed as a guest on sev­er­al med­ical shows on lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tions un­til he was asked to co-host a med­ical show on IBN (Is­lam­ic Broad­cast­ing Net­work) in 2010.

"The feed­back was bril­liant and a lot of peo­ple en­joyed it."

Giv­en his knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence, he was asked by CNC3 to be a part of a show called "Ask the Doc­tor." The show was born when the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hit and al­lows peo­ple to call in to get an­swers to the many burn­ing ques­tions about the virus.

"Many peo­ple had ques­tions. A lot of pa­tients at the hos­pi­tal, at pri­vate prac­tice, a lot of doc­tors and health care work­ers al­so had ques­tions."

He said it al­lows him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to stay abreast of all that is tak­ing place with the evolv­ing virus.

"The nice thing about it is that per­sons had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to call in and ask, whether on­line or on the Face­book page, and get­ting some of the an­swers with more clar­i­ty, with a lit­tle bit of ex­pla­na­tion on some­thing top­i­cal, rel­e­vant."

Over­all he aims to al­ways be ac­cu­rate, giv­en the fears of the pop­u­la­tion to­wards the virus as well as the many myths that cir­cu­late about it.

"I was ac­tu­al­ly sur­prised at the ini­tial re­sponse and the pos­i­tiv­i­ty of feed­back from friends, fam­i­ly, even strangers who were so hap­py."

Teelucks­ingh said the even­tu­al plan was to ex­pand the show to all as­pects of med­i­cine, not just COVID-19.

"Ask the Doc­tor" airs on Tues­days and Thurs­days at 8 pm for one hour on CNC3.

Teelucks­ingh the man

Out­side of his pro­fes­sion­al and me­dia stand­ings, Teelucks­ingh sim­ply en­joys spend­ing time with his fam­i­ly. He lives in cen­tral Trinidad with his wife, Neela, who is al­so a spe­cial­ist eye doc­tor. He and his wife make time for ex­er­cise, even if it's just walk­ing their dog, Max.

"So I find time for ex­er­cise, prayer, we still read a lot, hik­ing. In terms of hob­bies, we like to trav­el when we get the op­por­tu­ni­ty."

His sib­lings still live near­by and his par­ents still live in the fam­i­ly home in Ch­agua­nas. "I see them al­most every day. That bond has been main­tained."

Teelucks­ingh said the bal­anc­ing of work/life re­la­tion­ship is of ut­most im­por­tance.

His ad­vice to those who want to live ful­fill­ing lives: "Be fear­less in what sets your soul on fire." Med­i­cine, he said, "sets my soul on fire."