• 01 Jul, 2024
• Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz

Supporting Healthcare Professionals through Compassionate Care

Magazica: Welcome, readers. Today we are honored to feature Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz, a visionary leader whose entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to social impact are shaping the future as the CEO and founder of Oneness Education Community and Research Foundation. Dr. Syed is on a mission to create 100,000 jobs, championing nonprofit initiatives that drive change. A serial entrepreneur and innovator, Dr. Syed’s work spans healthcare and business education, where he imparts wisdom and ignites innovation. Join us as we explore his journey, insights, and the powerful impact of his work. Welcome, Dr. Syed.

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: Thank you so much.

Magazica: Our first question as we start will be what sparked or inspired the idea for starting your foundation, and how does it connect with your passion for healthcare?

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: Need to give a short introduction about myself. I’m a medical doctor from India and I’ve been practicing in India after completing my graduate and also my residency. I’ve been practicing for close to 4 years and teaching at a university for medical and dental graduates. Then, after that, I wanted to learn more about the pharmaceutical industry and clinical research. After completing my residency, I embarked on my journey in the pharmaceutical industry as a medical advisor, where we will be a bridge between the pharma industry and also the doctors who are there on the ground. So, in a way, we provide the doctors with recent updates. I worked under an organization that is a world leader in terms of insulin production and innovation for diabetes, and also for Alzheimer’s and obesity. It’s an amazing organization. I worked there as a medical advisor for close to 2 years. During this process, I was just trying to look into other countries where I could migrate and enter. Just proceed to see what the better opportunities for me and my family are. So, one among those was Canada. So, during that time, because of COVID-19, there was no migration happening as such. So, I chose to take just one year of a course about leadership and healthcare professionals.

After coming here, I continued my studies with Confederation College, Thunder Bay. When I landed here, I was really excited to learn about the current system, because we all know Canada has one of the best healthcare systems and has always been at the forefront in terms of providing proper rights for their citizens. The freedom and the freedom of speech, or freedom of whatever they want to follow, and the amazing healthcare system publicly funded. I was excited to learn about the healthcare system, but the reality is, once we started, we could always see it’s like when I was staying in my country, I thought the grass was greener on the other side. So, after coming here, we could see more in detail about what’s the ground reality here. And still, it’s the best system, but still, I learned a lot of challenges here. So, that’s when I realized that for healthcare, internationally trained healthcare professionals, when they come to this country, this country has a huge variety of challenges compared to the Middle East, Singapore, and Malaysia. Compared to those countries, the challenges are completely different. In North America, the barriers were different. But once I learned that I understood that it’s not going to be a cakewalk in terms of this journey, but still, I realized that it’s going to be time-consuming and energy and financially consuming. It consumes everything about whatever you could provide to this.

Then I could see, similar to me, there were many in the same position. Thousands of internationally trained healthcare professionals, I could see them in the same position. At the same time, I could see that healthcare is a crisis in this country in terms of human resources, like a labor shortage followed by long waiting times, a primary care crisis, and a specialist crisis. So, I was just trying to see how we can leverage my international training as a healthcare professional, which would try to provide some kind of solution for this country. That’s where I was able to bring in the Oneness Education Foundation, with the mission to improve this amazing country’s healthcare system in any way possible, and we are primarily focusing on leveraging internationally trained or educated healthcare professionals. That was the initial idea in that aspect.

Whenever I spoke to my professors, including the number of parliaments, I had a couple of interactions with them when they were acknowledging the challenges, but they were also saying that we have to depend on international healthcare professionals. So, I thought, we should provide a platform for people who are international healthcare professionals. We provide the platform with all the information for them to begin their journey in Canada. That’s where this initially started.

Magazica: That was very inspiring to hear because whenever you find a different ground reality rather than retreat, you have chosen to go ahead and, in a way of survival, you didn’t just survive. You are trying to help others to survive and flourish. That’s a very big signpost for positivity. Great to know. So, how does your foundation contribute or make a difference as you are speaking, and it was very evident from your conversation that how does your foundation contribute, or make a difference in the health and wellbeing of the communities you serve?

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: That’s another amazing question. I think I left out a part of the last question about how this foundation aligned with my passion as a healthcare professional. So those two questions are almost similar in a way for me to have the connection. Being a doctor, I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with patients, and I could see that once we understand what a patient is going through, what are the limitations they have? Once we understand that, we can have more impact. It’s not just about my technical knowledge or my knowledge about a human system and everything; it’s also about using emotional intelligence and seeing what the challenges they have. So, I am just bringing back to the previous question, there is more to healthcare than just treating it with medicine. That’s the very first thing I learned. That’s what made me embark on the journey in the pharmaceutical industry.

During my time practicing as a medical advisor, even though I don’t treat the patient directly when I could share updates about the new medication, and how the new medication is better in terms of efficiency and also safety compared to the previous medication, I could see that if the doctor, with whom we are working, is providing the updated medication which has lesser side effects and is more efficient, I could see that instead of me, a single doctor treating a patient, when we could enlighten many doctors, and when they treat the patient, it reduces a lot of side effects, which reduces the complications for the patient in case they have diabetes, they have long-term, short-term complications. So, when we work on this medical education, activity, or guidance, we can see that many patients benefit from a single person. This made me realize again that even if a healthcare professional can’t end up becoming a doctor or end up becoming a regulatory professional, like a nurse or pharmacist because there are a lot of challenges, the key contributing factors vary hugely. That’s when I realized that the moment we have a third-person perspective, I could see that when we help out the internationally trained healthcare professional.

We still be a part of the community in terms of working towards public health, preventing disease, or health promotion. Once we leverage their education and experience, instead of them doing a survival job, the moment they lose trust in themselves or the system, they leave healthcare. With the Oneness Education Foundation, what we are trying to build is for any internationally educated healthcare professional. We want to let them know you chose healthcare because you had that service mentality, you were able to empathize with people, you wanted to be a compassionate human. That’s why you chose to be a healthcare professional. That’s why you chose to do so many hours of work improving patients’ lives. But I wanted to acknowledge that, I wanted to tell those healthcare professionals we still could have that impact. You could still be in the noble profession.

That’s where we think that once we sit and talk to them, we just want to remove all the challenges. Yes, some professionals might have four or five challenges for them to become a healthcare professional in Oneness Healthcare, in Oneness Community Facility, in Oneness Education Foundation. We wanted to remove those barriers. Even if we could remove one barrier for someone, it could still have that impact. Once they land in being a healthcare system, they just want to end it. Once they are in the healthcare system, it would in turn improve the community, in turn, make the community healthier. That’s what, in Oneness Education Foundation, we are trying to do.

Magazica: I like the term you used, emotional intelligence. I’m from an HR background. But as you said, in education and educational leadership in healthcare, emotional intelligence is the foremost important thing, and that is why you could use all the words empathy, compassion, and everything. Fantastic to hear, as if you are speaking the same thing in the health sector. So, thank you for that. Could you share some success stories from your foundation that have made a significant or big impact on people’s lives? Some success stories, please.

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: Sure, just to provide us with what or the services we are providing, just to share that point, the key services are to start with. We have an app where people can join in this app, and they can be a part of this community. People who were successful and currently practicing are there in this app. They’d be able to. So, these people are forerunners. They were able to break through those barriers and they were currently in the healthcare system. We have that community. It’s a Circle app where we have the Oneness Community. Now, these people, the people who are right now having challenges, can join this app. We can discuss and share what the challenges are. We can provide the information. So, it’s our application similar to LinkedIn. It’s only for healthcare professionals. Only we are there here in that app as it is. That’s the first service we provide to provide that psychosocial support.

Then, second, one would be, we also provide the many, even though they have experience back home, in this country they expect a certain certification, certain training. So, we also are working towards providing CPR, and first aid. We are yet to start to provide CPR first aid and the EMR electronic medical record training and their clinical research and health promotion training. We are currently working towards creating this course. So, this was the project that we applied for a black-founded network. So that’s why we got selected for, and we got selected as a winner for the BN of BF and affiliate program. I will share the link with you on that. We got selected for that. So, we wanted to provide this kind of training so that they can land their first healthcare job. They have that training. They learn how to communicate the ethical point of this country. This country has its ethical guidelines.

So, once we have that, we want to work towards crowdfunding because for someone to become a doctor or a pharmacist, we need $5,000 to $50,000. The number is scary as it is. But we wanted to provide funding also for these amazing people so that they’ll be able to use that money to write the exam and take the courses. We wanted to do this as interest-free. So, we want to make sure that it’s not part of the interesting aspect because if we put more burden on these amazing healthcare professionals, we have already done it for two dentists. It’s already been shared on LinkedIn. We have two dentists whom we have funded to start their dentistry process. So, like when they are paying back, they’re already starting to pay back just as a monthly installment. You just want to keep it easy on these people, these amazing doctors as such.

And that’s the third thing by doing the crowdfunding or by using the charity foundation. We want to provide the support, financial support for these healthcare professionals. And the last one would be, we have our job portal because we want amazing employers. We want them to know that we have a platform, kindly give us an opportunity. So, this is solely focused on healthcare professionals where they can showcase their skills. They can have their video, they can showcase their skill, and the employers can directly put the filter. It’s not like LinkedIn or Indeed. Yeah, healthcare professionals are the product. So, we are the product. So, any employer can put the filter according to location, availability, experience, and language. They can put the filter, and they can build from the ground we build this product. It’s called Compassionate.

So, in terms of success stories, I just wanted to say that we also provide immigration support. So, we have close to 10 to 12 professionals who we help them to get PR from creating their profile and everything. That’s the very first thing, so that they can be a permanent resident and start working on this. And we have helped close to 15 to 20 professionals to get a job in their field by helping them in terms of updating their resume and having more interviews so that they’ll be confident in terms of doing that. That’s the second part we have done. They already shared about the funding that we have provided. These are the success stories. But having that community, we have close to 100 people who are there in the community having someone that’s a huge success. People are asking about their challenges. Their questions are being answered right away by other healthcare professionals who are foreigners in this country.

Magazica: Fantastic that you have your app, you have helped people. You are helping people with certifications. You are applying for charity and helping others with the job portal. The curated job portal is a big thing. In this process, what are the challenges that you have faced, and how have you managed to overcome them?

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: So, in terms of challenges, I would always start with being consistent as the very first thing. Initially, that was the challenge because we have our own family to take care of when you start with any sort of nonprofit organization. The first challenge would be to be consistent with our other job. What we do and how we’ve overcome it is that by working with the team.

So, I have amazing team members. We help Priya, who is a physiotherapist, and we have Mariam, Dr. Mariam Mosa, who is also a director. We have a big team who take responsibility and they do things to impact the organization and improve the lives of international healthcare professionals. That’s how we overcome it by having a team who would support each other whenever someone is down. That’s the very first thing.

The second challenge I would say is regarding the financial aspect, because to build something we always need to invest. The best way to overcome this is to do a market analysis and know that whatever service we are providing will benefit the people, and they’ll be able to leverage the service. But we are still in the process of overcoming that. We are starting certification courses to be self-sustainable. In terms of finance, we also have membership fees, like a monthly subscription, that also benefits in terms of running our organization. People trust our mission, and so they’ll be able to build this together, grow this together.

The last challenge would be, as a nonprofit organization, people tend to depend on grants. My good friend Dr. Jose, who is a co-founder, always says that the government gets too many people who raise their hands to them. Many NGOs ask the government for grants, so the government can’t keep on satisfying everyone by providing funds for everyone. So, in Oneness Education Foundation, what we are building is for us to be self-sustainable. We are not like any NGO. If you see, in this country, all the hospitals, all the public health, public hospitals, all the public colleges, these all are NGOs. It’s surprising if you take any hospital, you take any public college, everything is a charity organization. They are NGOs.

We don’t see ourselves as a nonprofit organization which is just running to provide redundant service. We wanted to be an organization that creates jobs. That’s where my tagline comes into place. We want to be a charity organization that creates jobs, which means we hope to provide service and be a self-sustaining organization. So, to build this service, to build a product, to be self-sustaining is a different ball game we are struggling with. We are trying to collaborate and learn from other organizations.

Magazica: I was listening to you as if you were telling our stories as an organization. It was very good to hear the last line. How does your foundation collaborate with other organizations in the healthcare field to reach your goal?

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: Regarding collaboration, we are collaborating with Black Founders Network, Woveo, Impakt foundation for Social Change, Ally First Aid, Ontario Nonprofit Network, Circle Community. Regarding the service we provide, we don’t want to have redundancy. You don’t want to duplicate and reduce the efficiency of other organizations. Also, the very first thing we are making sure that we don’t duplicate the service. That’s the very first thing. So further, initially, we are currently collaborating with whatever service we are providing. We are seeing what the other organizations that provide the same service are. But we can work together with those organizations, reduce redundancy, and grow together.

Currently, we are connecting with some organizations. And we are collaborating with this organization. We also want to collaborate with staffing agencies. We are collaborating with leaders of staffing agencies to ensure that our members get jobs and gain hands-on experience. Collaboration is key for NGOs; we need to work with other organizations. We are actively collaborating with many organizations, including the Black Founder Network, to have an impact at the grassroots level and improve people’s lives.

Magazica: I liked how you defined redundancy, saying that we do not want to reduce other organizations’ efficiency. It was new. Thank you for that. So, what are some plans for your organization? How do you envision expanding its reach and impact?

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: Yes, that’s the dream. What makes our organization different is that we want to start our clinic. We have two amazing physiotherapists who are part of our organization, and we aim to start a clinic in September. It sounds just around the corner, but we are determined to make it happen. The clinic will be part of the Oneness Community Foundation. We’re starting with physiotherapy, and next year we plan to start a dental clinic, pharmacy, and laboratory. That’s our long-term plan. We want to create jobs so that people can gain confidence. We can also provide them with training internships in our clinic, instead of depending on other employers. We should become an employer ourselves and stand by what we preach. Our mission is to create jobs and address the challenges in research and innovation. We want to work on the Oneness Research Foundation, conduct community research, and help healthcare professionals from various countries to improve their communities’ health. We want to publish these results and show that you can make a difference in public health even if you can’t become a doctor or nurse.

Magazica: Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and good luck with your efforts to establish a clinic in September. How can our readers get involved with your foundation and support its mission?

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: If you know someone who is a healthcare professional, we welcome everyone. We want to ensure that it’s not just about our organization. Similar to what your organization is doing, we want to ensure that people get the information and move forward one step at a time. When they join us, we want to make sure they will get the information about how to be in healthcare. Even before landing in Canada, you can be a part of the Oneness Education Foundation. The important part of this app, as I said to you, is that all the previous conversations can be read. The moment you join, you can access all the information, whatever the others spoke, whatever the training we are trying to build. That’s where humans start from. Someone can join Oneness and start at 40 percent, getting all the information readily available. If you’re a healthcare professional and want to be there in the noble field, we are here to leverage your experience and provide all the support from integration training. Anything you ask for; we are there to provide. Join as a benefactor for the Oneness Education Foundation.

Magazica: Dr. Syed, it is the age of entrepreneurs and startups. What would be your advice to someone who wants to start a nonprofit in the healthcare sector?

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: First of all, I will not say I am qualified to suggest someone, but as per my experience, I would say start, register for it, start somewhere. The moment you start somewhere, you will start seeing all those challenges, but at the same time, you will see solutions also. Only when you know what the barrier in front of you is, will you be able to provide solutions to break those barriers. So, I would start with just registering your business and making sure that your mission is clear. Only when you know your destination will you know what needs to be done. Register the business once you know what your mission and vision are. And I would just begin with adding values. Every day your values will be challenged. If we are not going to be strong on the values, if you do not have an amazing team who can question us, guide you, and have that rapport with you, we will lose the values down the lane. So, in Oneness Education Foundation, we are completely focused on our five values and our seven leadership principles. Our endpoint is to make sure that our team members, our community, grow together. Once you do these things, it’s just a matter of time. Being consistent, learning something about it, and collaborating with people. I would say these things matter, and in time you’ll be able to provide the service, the same with both NGOs and profit. It’s the same aspect.

Magazica: It is a very anecdotal point, register your business. Try to have the solutions in front of you, whatever the barrier comes in, your mission should be very clear regarding your values and everything you can contribute, and your ideas, for example, you have mentioned another. Very, very, very, Tom. A good term that I like is servant leadership. This is one of the latest leadership theories, you have an amazing team, and you have to be consistent in your contribution and everything.

Thank you very much for these suggestions. I hope not only for nonprofits. Many people want to start their own business for profit as well. They will also be very, very inspired by your thinking.

Thank you very much for your time, and for sharing your experience with our readers, and wish you all the luck for doing whatever you are doing and whatever your team is trying to accomplish. Good vibes ahead. Thank you.

Dr. Syed Hussain Fayaz: Thank you, and I have to say just a few more words. I wanted to start with the name of the Creator. But obviously, I want to end this with all praise to the Creator who created this whole universe and all praise to the Creator because of the Creator. We can do this, and our parents. So, thanks to my mom and dad, my siblings, and my friends who help me to have these values. And we have our tagline in our values, in one situation. I want to thank my team Osezua Momoh, Glancy, Priya and all Oneness members.

That’s what makes me strive. I wanted to make sure that that helplessness should be only towards our Creator. Already I end with this helplessness, any human shouldn’t feel helplessness. The moment you feel helpless, you let people oppress you. In Oneness Education Foundation, we want to provide anything possible to this community, so that no one feels helpless. Let’s provide them so that they can hold our hand, and just move forward.

So don’t feel helpless, the core is here, and we are here to support you. Which means any healthcare professional, and any human also. But to start with healthcare professionals. I just wanted to end on that note.

Magazica: Thank you for that excellent message to the readers. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts.