Dr. Prabhpreet Singh became a doctor out of curiosity.
He wanted to know how the human body functioned.
Today, Singh is a cardiac electrophysiologist with Aurora BayCare Cardiology in Green Bay. He’s had advanced training to understand electrical dysfunction in the heart.
“For me, it was more of something which I wanted to learn more about so I just went into the medical field to learn more about how the human body functions, essentially, and how we end up in this place where we are made of tissue and bones and all that stuff,” he says. “It was more of a self-discovery process and getting more educated about the functioning of the human body.”
Much like the famed fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by one of Singh’s favorite childhood authors, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Singh wanted to solve the mysteries of the human body.
“We all get sick and we all get ill,” he says. “You see the doctor and then they give you a pill and you feel better and it’s always a mystery how that happens. It was kind of that process of understanding what’s really going on when they see you and how they think about things.”
Singh intended to experience those Sherlock Holmes moments. How, though, to do that? Elementary, dear reader! He’d go to medical school.
He earned his medical degree from All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, India. He spent a year in Singapore gaining additional medical training.
“That was a huge cultural shock to me, more so because I didn’t know how to speak Cantonese,” he says. “I was under the impression that everybody spoke English there. … Most of the older patients who end up in the hospital, they don’t speak English. They speak Cantonese or Mandarin or various dialects so that was a huge disadvantage.”
Singh then came to the United States for more medical training, settling in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he served a residency in internal medicine at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh.
The U.S. always held particular appeal for Singh, especially when many of his medical school friends relocated to the States.
“The other reason was, I guess, you know, you grow up watching Hollywood movies so you have some sense of what it is to be in America,” he says.
He completed fellowship training in cardiology at Tulane University Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans and in electrophysiology at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
Singh quickly was drawn to cardiology, specifically electrophysiology.
“I always, always wanted to do something mathematical or more objective. A lot of medicine can be very gray and very nuanced and that’s good and bad because a lot of things are not set in stone. They are very dynamic. With electrophysiology, especially, there are a lot of things that are essentially very logical and mathematical,” he says.
Each patient presents a mystery, requiring skilled use of diagnostic procedures and testing to understand and treat electrical dysfunction in a patient’s heart, Singh says.
“It’s always a puzzle. It’s almost like you’re a detective and you’ve got all these tools in your arsenal and you’re trying to figure out what’s going on,” he says.
He works to crack each patient’s heart health mystery, seeking to uncover and share the vital information needed to guide his patients to improved heart function.
“That’s something which I try to do every day,” he says. “Basically try to educate them on this complicated disease that they’re dealing with and try to educate them to make a decision as to how this disease is affecting them adversely and what the best options would be for them.
“What I really want them to know is that whatever they decide, I and the clinic here are there for them. We are here to help them through this process. The goal is not to sway them one way or the other. It’s just to be the best resource possible for them to make the best and the most educated decision they can to get better care for themselves.”
When he’s not in the office, Singh enjoys family time with his wife and children.
“My older son is 4 years old. My youngest one just turned 1. Between the two of them I don’t get to do anything else,” he says. “I’m pretending to be robots. My son pretends to be a cheetah and I’ll be the gazelle and he’s trying to hunt me. Typical parent stuff.”