Zubin Damania

#asianpacificamericanheritagemonthProfilesApril 19, 2024

Zubin Damania is a physician, hospitalist, and internet personality who uses humor to highlight medical issues and problems within the healthcare industry.

The son of two physicians, Damania studied medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, followed by an internal medicine residency at Stanford University. He worked as a hospitalist (basically, a primary care physician for hospitalized patients) at Stanford for the next decade.

Damania had always been creative, with a wicked sense of humor. In medical school he developed medical-based comedy routines as a means of dealing with the stress of work. In 2011 he developed a rapper persona called ZDoggMD, who makes videos and comedy sketches about current medical issues including testicular exams, Caribbean medical schools, vaccine controversies, physician burnout, and the dysfunction of the U.S. healthcare system.

Damania moved from the Bay Area to Las Vegas in 2012 at the urging of Zappos founder Tony Hseih, who was investing in a project to revitalize the city’s downtown. Damania founded Turntable Health, a direct primary care clinic aimed at disease prevention, which operated until 2017. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at UNLV School of Medicine.