HYDERABAD: On an average day, the foyer of Sunshine Hospitals reminds you of the busy Secunderabad Railway Station with perhaps as many footfalls as the railway junction.
Not surprisingly, the heart and soul of the hospital, joint replacement surgeon Dr AV Guruva Reddy performs 4,000 knee and hip replacement surgeries a year (that’s roughly 11 per day) across his hospitals spread out at PG Road, Gachibowli in the city besides in Karimnagar and Bhubaneshwar.
The hospital made news last month when it inaugurated a dedicated centre for robot-assisted joint replacement surgeries ‘Sunshine Orthobotics’ at its Gachibowli centre.
However, it is not just the number of surgeries or the advanced technologies that Dr Guruva Reddy is known for, but for his versatility, creativity and positivity.
When Dr Reddy starts talking, you almost feel he is like a motivational guru giving a TedTalk, which incidentally is a platform he has spoken on, twice so far. He gives you quick formulas to remember his success secrets.
“Qualities that doctors need today are 4Ts – trust, time, touch and talk,” he says. However, he is also equally at ease with words when he answers questions. So what’s his take on Coronavirus and how the state and the country are handling it?
“Corona is a virus that has been made viral by the media,” he quips and goes on to applaud how India has handled it ‘pretty well’ by taking pre-emptive measures before much damage has occurred. “70 cases in a billion-plus population for a country like India is quite a feat,” he remarks.
Incidentally, Dr Guruva Reddy is a man who houses many personalities in his body.
“I love being in front of the camera. I am a natural, I think. This is why I enjoy shooting for my Youtube channel which started off as a whim to communicate with people but later on became bigger and better,” he says about his YouTube channel with 11.4K subscribers. You are mistaken if you think this ramp-walking doc (which he did recently for KIMS Hospital for a cause) dishes out health advice only.
From interviewing stalwarts such as Baahubali director SS Rajamouli (who he is says is family) and Olympian PV Sindhu, he also is happy heartily biting into a makkajonna kanki (maize corn) to tell his viewers the joy of eating like a beast.
Not just a show host, the man who has travelled about 90 countries so far says that he also enjoyed going viral, not in the medical sense, though, once on the Internet when his wife Dr Bhavani Reddy, a gynaecologist and the love of his life, and he performed to actor Pavan Kalyan’s Pilla Nuvvu Leni Jeevitam song for a private event but the video went viral.
“It was shot four years ago by my son Adarsh, another creative creature, for a club event, but it got leaked and today it has recorded over 1 lakh views.
“Luckily, I shot it with my wife or my life would have been in peril,” he quips while sharing that it was his ‘Bhavanipuram’ who gave him the permission to hang a black and white painting of his hearthrob and Bollywood star Hema Malini in his cabin.
Dr AVG or Guru as his friends call him, says, “I never miss my 6 am tennis class as I feel it fills me with energy which lasts from 8 am to 9 pm at the hospital”.
The doctor who lives in Rajendra Nagar and has to commute from Secunderabad to Gachibowli for his twin hospitals uses the commute time to listen to music while grabbing his breakfast and lunch.
Until he opened the Gachibowli centre, he used to spend Saturdays for himself and Sundays with his family, which incidentally, has been nicknamed as G7 by him, but now, he is too busy for that.
“I don’t feel I am doing justice to my patients who come all the way from across the country. So for now, my Saturday is dead but I hope to resurrect her soon, he says.”
While he believes that politics would be a great step towards public service with more impact, for now, he wants to discharge his duties as a doctor with diligence.
“The day I will not be able to give my 8 pm patient the same smile I gave my 8 am patient, I am finished as a doctor and I will retire,” he says.