When Carlos Diaz began working as a medical assistant at UCR Health, medical school was not yet part of his plan. Today, he wears a white coat of his own as a first-year student at the UCR School of Medicine.

The path was not a straight one. But for Diaz, working alongside UCR Health physicians and caring for patients across pediatrics and primary care helped transform an interest in healthcare into something more certain: a desire to become a physician.

“I fell in love with talking to patients,” Diaz said. “Working with a variety of people just really opened up my connection to others.”

Learning to Listen

Diaz joined UCR Health in January 2023 as a medical assistant. He started working in pediatrics before moving into different areas of primary care.

Despite being naturally introverted, he found that his work with patients made him more comfortable interacting with people from different walks of life. In pediatrics, he learned how to communicate with both children and their parents, assisting families from their first visit through ongoing care.

For Diaz, making patients feel at ease was an important part of the job.

“How can we make them feel comfortable here and then have them feel comfortable enough to continue their care with us?” he recalled thinking.

Eventually, some families began to ask for him by name. Parents would ask whether he would be rooming their child, or request him specifically to give their child a vaccine based on past visits.

His work in primary care also helped him build deeper relationships with the patients he saw most often. Some were managing chronic illness alongside financial strain, insurance hurdles, or other challenges outside the clinic.

Those experiences taught Diaz that sometimes the most valuable thing a medical professional can do is simply listen.

“They were always eager to come back for their visit, just because they felt like they weren’t being dismissed,” he said.

Even now, those patients remain with him.

“I still think about them as I’m studying, and it really gives me a grounding mechanism to continue forward with my studies,” Diaz said. “I’m in class and I wonder how they’re doing.”

UCR Health Physicians Who Helped Shape His Path

As Diaz was learning the value of listening to patients, he was also gaining the attention of the doctors he worked alongside.

At the time, he was considering PA school and had never pictured himself as a physician up to that point. That began to change after he spent time working alongside UCR Health doctors.

One conversation stands out. Dr. Roopa Viraraghavan, a pediatrician he worked with, called him into her office and asked him directly what he wanted to do with his future. Rather than let him settle for the path he had already chosen, she pushed him to think bigger. 

“I need you to really do some soul searching and think about what you want to do with your future,” he recalls her saying. “You have a lot of potential… we think you’d be a great doctor. And if you want to take that route, just let us know and then we’re gonna help you out however we can.” 

Their support did not stop with encouragement. Dr. Roopa and Dr. Nandini Gowda wrote letters of recommendation and offered guidance, while his UCR Health mentors connected him with Dr. Denise Martinez, the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the UCR School of Medicine, who helped him navigate his application.

“I would say probably the biggest factor that contributed to me going to medical school was just the support of the physicians that I had while working there,” Diaz said.

Dr. Blanca Campos is yet another physician who left a strong mark on Diaz. He recalls how excited she was when he told her he had been accepted to medical school. “She’s such a wonderful doctor, and I aspire to be like her,” Diaz said, referring to Dr. Campos. 

According to Diaz, physicians like Dr. Roopa, Dr. Gowda, Dr. Campos, and Dr. Marc Debay became his mentors, the role models he hopes to emulate.

Now, some of those relationships are continuing in a new setting. Diaz has already crossed paths with Dr. Roopa at the School of Medicine, where UCR Health physicians can also serve as instructors and preceptors. The doctors who once encouraged him as a medical assistant may now take part in training him as a future physician.

A Full Circle Return to UCR

For Diaz, going back to UCR to study medicine meant staying connected to the Inland Empire community where he grew up. He was familiar with UCR through his older brother's attendance at the university. Completing his undergraduate studies at UCR and later working at UCR Health both led him back to pursue his medical education at the UCR School of Medicine.

His connection to community health existed even before he came to UCR. Diaz recalls attending community health fairs with his mother as a child, though at the time he saw them as a little more than neighborhood gatherings. Years later, while volunteering at similar events through UCR, he found himself on the other side of the table, offering resources to families much like his own. 

“It kind of felt like now I was on the other side of the table, being able to help out a kid that was like me,” he explained.

That sense of coming full circle continued when Diaz was accepted to the UCR School of Medicine. “UCR always felt like home,” he said.

Carrying Those Lessons Forward

Diaz is still in the early stages of his medical education, but he is already leaning toward family medicine, drawn to the range of ages he treated at UCR Health. He is also considering academic medicine, given the possibility of balancing patient care with teaching future clinicians, much like the UCR Health providers who mentored him.

More than any clinical specialty, Diaz is clear about how he wants his patients to feel when they come to see him. “My goal would probably be to just be a doctor that can give them some peace when they come into the clinic,” he said.

That goal reflects one of the biggest lessons he took from UCR Health: listening can shape a patient’s entire experience. He witnessed it firsthand as an MA, then experienced it himself when UCR Health physicians listened to him and helped him see a future he had never imagined for himself.

As he begins the next phase of his education, Diaz wants to carry that approach forward: building trust with patients, listening closely to their concerns, and making sure their worries are taken seriously.