Pediatrician. Teacher. Traveller. Reader. Still curious.
For more than 25 years, Dr. Rajiv Singh has spent most working days in a room with children and the adults who worry about them. That experience has taught him medicine, certainly. It has also taught him something less easily captured in a qualification: how differently people experience the same illness.
A fever may be routine to a pediatrician and terrifying to a first-time parent. A child who looks thin to a grandparent may be following a perfectly healthy growth curve. A cough may be blamed on curd while the more relevant trigger sits unnoticed in the home environment. A parent asking for an antibiotic may not really be asking for an antibiotic at all; they may be asking, 'Are you sure my child is safe if we wait?'
Those are the spaces in which Dr. Rajiv believes good pediatric care happens — between the clinical facts and the human interpretation of those facts.
I did not always know I would become a pediatrician
Dr. Rajiv does not tell the polished story that he dreamed of pediatrics from childhood. When postgraduate choices were being made, pediatrics was a respected branch and his academic position gave him the opportunity to pursue it. The affection for the specialty came later, through the work itself.
Babies were a particular revelation. A child may cry during a vaccination and, minutes later, smile at the same doctor. Children can be immediate, transparent and remarkably forgiving. Over time, what began as a professional choice became the field he genuinely wanted to remain in.
That honesty is important to the story because it reflects a larger theme in his life: interest often deepens through experience. He remains curious about fields he did not formally train in — psychology, human behaviour, philosophy, finance and travel — because each offers another lens through which to understand people.
What 25+ years changes
Early in a medical career, knowledge can feel like the central asset. With time, Dr. Rajiv believes judgement becomes equally important: knowing which piece of information matters, when a child needs intervention, when a family needs observation and counselling, and when the limits of one’s own expertise have been reached.
Experience also changes the consultation. A symptom does not arrive alone. It arrives with a family history, previous prescriptions, social media advice, grandparents’ beliefs, school pressures, household routines and a parent’s threshold for anxiety. Two families can describe the same symptom but need very different conversations.
This is one reason he is willing to spend longer when the case needs it. Some consultations are straightforward. Others require 30 or 40 minutes because the history is complicated, the child has already been evaluated elsewhere, or the family needs to understand why a particular course of action is — or is not — necessary.
The anxious parent is not a nuisance
Dr. Rajiv often says, in effect, that the anxious parent can become the second patient in a pediatric consultation. He does not mean that anxiety is imaginary or that parents should simply stop worrying. He means that anxiety itself changes decisions.
A worried parent may interpret normal appetite variation as malnutrition, a second viral illness as 'weak immunity', or a recurring fever as proof that the previous treatment failed. If the doctor treats only the symptom and ignores the interpretation, the family may leave with a prescription but without understanding.
His approach is to identify the concern underneath the question. Sometimes humour helps. Sometimes a growth chart helps. Sometimes a very simple explanation of the natural course of an illness helps. Reassurance, in his view, should not mean saying 'nothing is wrong' without thought. It should mean showing the parent why the current facts are reassuring and what facts would make the situation less reassuring.
Why psychology became relevant to medicine
Dr. Rajiv’s interest in psychology and human behaviour is practical rather than academic. He believes professionals who work closely with people benefit from understanding how stress, ego, fear, body language, tone and expectations shape communication.
A teenager who avoids eye contact, a parent who repeatedly asks the same question, an aggressive tone that is really fear, or a family member who has already decided what treatment should be given — these cues influence how a consultation unfolds.
For him, this is not mind-reading. It is paying attention. The goal is to understand what is preventing the family from hearing, trusting or acting on medical advice.
Less intervention is not the goal. Appropriate intervention is.
One of the clearest themes in Dr. Rajiv’s practice is resistance to doing something merely because doing something feels reassuring.
He is particularly cautious about unnecessary antibiotics, investigations, supplements and hospital admissions. But he does not want that philosophy reduced to a slogan such as 'I prescribe fewer medicines'. There are times when antibiotics are necessary, tests are essential, admission is the safest choice, or a child needs rapid escalation.
The clinical question is therefore not 'Can we avoid this?' It is 'Will this help this child, at this point in the illness?'
That distinction also applies to referral. Dr. Rajiv describes himself as a holistic pediatrician, but not as a doctor who must personally manage every problem. Recognising that a child needs a pediatric cardiologist, neurologist, gastroenterologist or another specialist is part of good general pediatrics.
The professional journey
Dr. Rajiv completed his MBBS at Kasturba Medical College in 1999, followed by a Diploma in Child Health at KMC Manipal, DNB Pediatrics and PGDMLS. His clinical journey included Guru Gobind Singh Government Hospital, Jaipur Golden Hospital, Kailash Hospital, Pushpanjali Crosslay/Max Super Speciality Hospital Vaishali, and Yatharth Super Speciality Hospital.
The longest chapter was Max Vaishali, where he spent approximately 14 years as a Senior Consultant. He subsequently served at Yatharth from May 2022 through August 2026, including as Associate Director, Paediatrics. He now practises as a Senior Consultant Pediatrician on an OPD basis.
Across those years, the professional identity broadened from clinician to teacher and mentor. He spent more than a decade guiding DNB students and has served as thesis guide/faculty. His own thesis examined obesity in school-going children, its risk factors and association with hypertension — a subject that feels increasingly relevant as adolescent inactivity, screens and obesity become more visible in everyday practice.
Selected recognition — without turning the page into a trophy cabinet
Recognition includes the Sardar Makhan Singh Memorial Gold Medal for Best Postgraduate Student at Jaipur Golden Hospital, a Distinguished Service Award from the Delhi Medical Association, academic distinctions in Pharmacology and Forensic Medicine, and the Global Excellence Special Award from GOPIO in 2020.
These credentials may matter when you are choosing a pediatrician, but they are only part of the picture. Dr. Rajiv’s long relationships with families, years of teaching and consistent approach to care offer a fuller sense of how he works.
Why he still reads outside medicine
His reading is eclectic but not random. He gravitates toward self-improvement, psychology, life philosophy, personal finance, investing and stories of people who changed their circumstances.
Books he has mentioned include The Psychology of Money, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Intelligent Investor, Peter Lynch’s writing and Option B. What connects these interests is a curiosity about decisions: why people behave as they do, how habits form, how adversity changes people, and what constitutes a sensible life.
Money, to him, is mostly about time
Dr. Rajiv’s interest in personal finance is partly rooted in experiencing financial constraint earlier in life. He has seen how many forms of stress eventually connect back to money: career choices, family tension, inability to take time away, and the feeling of having no options.
That is why the idea of financial independence appeals to him. He is interested in FIRE, but places greater emphasis on the 'FI' than on a dramatic early retirement date. Financial independence, in his view, buys choice.
The asset he values most is time because it cannot be earned back. More control over time can mean travel, family, reading, social contribution, exercise, friendships, or continuing to work because one wants to rather than because one has no alternative.
This is also where his interest in frugality and minimalism comes from. A satisfying life does not necessarily require an ever-expanding list of possessions. Knowing what is enough can itself be a form of freedom.
Travel as an education in people
Travel is one of the strongest reasons he wants financial independence. He likes geography, but what stays with him most are people and conversations.
A particularly formative experience was the 2018 International North-South Transport Corridor car rally. The journey took him through multiple countries including Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. The group included people from very different professional and personal backgrounds, and long hours on the road created conversations that would rarely happen inside a medical circle.
He remembers meeting entrepreneurs, financially successful people, people who had endured major adversity and people facing serious illness. The effect was to enlarge the world beyond the hospital and reinforce a simple awareness: life is finite and the planet is large.
Other memorable travel has included Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, a family-and-friends road trip in Australia, and travel in Africa. He prefers travel that is open-minded and experiential rather than centred on luxury or social-media display.
His personal ambition is simple enough to remember: experience at least 100 countries in his lifetime.
Ancient questions, modern anxiety
Dr. Rajiv is also interested in Greek and Indian philosophy. He reads the Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, Mahabharata and other Indian philosophical material not simply as religious literature, but as long-running explorations of duty, conflict, ego, fear, choice and human behaviour.
He is careful not to present himself as a scholar of these traditions. The attraction is that human beings have been asking many of the same questions for a very long time. Modern circumstances change; many of the underlying anxieties do not.
Community and usefulness
His idea of social contribution is practical: when there is a genuine need and you have the ability to help, try to be useful.
His community involvement has included support for children’s education and nutrition through NIRBHED Foundation, participation in disaster-relief and medical-relief efforts, neighbourhood medical camps, local crisis response, and advocacy around the safety and rights of medical professionals.
These efforts are not presented as a credential. They reflect a simple belief that the instinct to solve problems should not end at the clinic door, particularly when practical help can make an immediate difference.
The person friends describe
A close friend describes Dr. Rajiv as a '3 a.m. friend': someone who does not merely sympathise with a problem, but immediately begins thinking about what can actually be done.
Other words that recur are practical, resourceful, punctual, empathetic, resilient, good at bringing people together and unusually attentive to civic behaviour. The small example is revealing: at the end of a gathering, he is likely to start picking up plates rather than assuming somebody else will clean up.
He describes empathy as both strength and weakness; he can sometimes absorb another person’s anxiety more than he would like. But he would rather err on the side of genuine involvement than cosmetic concern.
What he hopes a family feels
“You do not have to consult me because I say you should. Consult a doctor in whom you have trust and faith.”
The clinic experience he wants is relaxed, positive and approachable. Parents should feel able to ask what they think is a foolish question. Children should not feel that the room belongs only to adults. Explanations should be simple enough to use at home. And when the consultation ends, the family should know not only what to do, but why.