Richard Koa Lim, MD, FHM (林俊荣) graduated from CKS high school in 1997 and has been a physician since 2005. He moved to the United States of America in 2009 to further his training in Internal Medicine. Since 2012, he has been working as a hospitalist, mainly doing night shifts (nocturnist). This specialty entails taking care of in-patients and admitting patients into the hospital at night when resources and staff are limited. Doc Richard works in 8 different hospitals around the state of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. His shifts would range from working 9 hours to as long as 16 straight hours. Aside from hospital work, he also volunteers as a primary care provider at the Rhode Island Free Clinic, providing free medical care to the uninsured population of Rhode Island since 2012.

Since the COVID crisis started, Doc Richard has been tirelessly working a lot and had less than 10 off-nights since February 8 to recover and rest. This is due to the increasing need for providers in hospitals, resulting from the surge of patients coming in as USA COVID cases are on the rise, especially in New York and New Jersey Cities, which are just 3.5 hours drive away from Rhode Island.

Recently, he also received privileges to volunteer for the largest health system in Rhode Island for COVID disaster, which is a cluster of 4 different hospitals.

Doc Richard has had many heartbreaking experiences, especially with family members not being able to see their relative in the hospital at a dying stage. The emotion that he felt during his patients' phone conversations with their family is something that he had never felt before, the hardship of losing someone you can’t see and bid goodbye.

With this novel virus, Doc Richard admits that there are no proven treatment and everything they know about treating and preventing it are mainly anecdotal.

On a personal note, he takes care of himself by eating enough nutritious food, exercising religiously, and sleeping at least 7 hours a day, if possible. He also takes Zinc supplement, which he believes prevented him from getting cough, colds, and flu in the past 4 years. Prior to taking it, Doc Richard gets sick every year since 2009. He hopes that by doing so, he would not get infected with the COVID-19 virus and he will be able to continue helping out until the crisis is over. Of course, he also wears PPE and observes proper hygiene as part of his normalroutine.

As a CKSian for 12 years, he is very proud of his formative years in Chiang Kai Shek College. He mentions how his teachers deeply enrooted in him the values of discipline, perseverance, and hardwork, which he continues to carry on today. He credits his alma mater for giving him the foundation that prepared him for another 12 years of education before becoming a physician. And now with this COVID-19 crisis, he is strongly facing the hardest challenge in his medical career, thanks to the character built by CKS College.

He also draws inspiration from his mother, Mrs. Julie Koa Lim (柯婉玲老師), a Chinese instruction teacher at CKS College from 1996 to 2018.

Dr. Richard K. Lim is a pride and honor of CKS College in the East Coast. May his star shines brighter more than ever.