Kishan Patel relishes in making order out of disorder. After all, as an ER doctor, his day to day is full of split-second decisions across a variety of new situations that could mean the difference between life and death. And it's that love of chaos that brought the 28-year-old from treating stab wounds to stabbing people in the back. Kishan is relying on his prioritization expertise to triage all the variables in the game (and firmly putting journeys on the back burner). But he fears his excellent bedside manner may make him too empathetic for what's needed to win.
Read on for my interview with Kishan, and check in with Parade.com daily for interviews with this season's contestants and other tidbits. Survivor 47 premieres on September 18 with a two-hour premiere on CBS.
Related: Meet the Full Cast of Survivor 47
Interview with Kishan from Survivor 47
How are you doing right now?
I'm good. I mean, preweek is preweek. It's been basically a silent retreat, and I feel like I'm slowly just decaying my mind, not having said a single word. I feel like a kid at a toy store, and the parents are like, "You can buy a toy at the end," and they're just silently waiting the whole time. I've literally just been patiently waiting for something to happen. [ Laughs .]
Well, now you get a chance to play with the action figures for a bit! So, to start, give me your name, age, and occupation.
I'm Kishan, I'm 27, and I'm an ER doctor.
What led you down that path? Was medicine something you always wanted to do?
Good question. That's a million-dollar one. There's two folds to why I wanted to do emergency medicine and become a doctor. The less significant one is that emergency medicine is chaotic. It's so fun. You see the craziest things. There's never a dull day, and you never know what's going to walk through the doors. You could go from a stab wound to a gunshot wound to a stubbed toe. The emotional whiplash of that is something that I find really enjoyable, and not everyone will. And it's really fun.
But a bigger portion of why I even went into medicine in the first place is no one in my family is a doctor. I'm the first generation to actually go through to college. And so the community that I grew up in was a very uninsured, very low-income community. So a lot of the people in my community and even my own family use the ER as primary care. That's their only means of access to care. So I always found a special spot for people that are very underserved and very vulnerable that you turn to when you know they have nowhere else to turn to. And it's just the perfect place.
You're that first point of touch for that person's medical experience, their entire medical journey, and you can leave a lasting impact in their life if you leave a poor impression versus a good one. If you leave a poor one, oftentimes people won't seek further care. Versus you leave a good one, then you kind of establish their trust in the healthcare system. So that was kind of the broader reason why medicine and emergency medicine. But then it's also fun and chaotic, and I really enjoy it.
Well, that may answer my next question about the transition from ER to TC. Talk to me about your history with Survivor , and why it brought you from one fun, chaotic environment to another.
Out of everyone here, I'm probably not the biggest super fan. I only started watching 2020 or 2021 during the pandemic when I was bored out of my mind. Netflix had one or two seasons on it. And I was like, "Okay, let's just see this." And then I watched it for the first time, and I immediately became obsessed. I've seen so many seasons now; I absolutely love it. The chaos of it, it's very similar to emergency medicine. There's chaos all around you. You're not going to be able to control everything in front of you and everything that goes around you. You have to be aware of everything and know how to triage and know how to prioritize. And keep in your mind a laundry list of tasks and everything that needs to happen to have a successful outcome. And that's what I do every single day in the emergency room, and that's what I'm gonna end up doing here. You don't need to be in control all the time. You don't need to be the point person every single time. You just need to be aware of everything that's going on, and you need to know when to turn your attention and focus on something. That's the most important thing. And that's literally what Survivor is, and why I love it.
Right. "We have the nurses dressing the wounds over there. Let me take care of the most high-priority issues."
Exactly. We have that little, small alliance doing their own business. Don't need to worry about them right now. We'll deal with them later. I need to focus on this first, and then I can deal with that. It's just constantly triaging and prioritizing in your brain, and that's the fun of it.
Give me one Survivor winner and one non-winner who you identify with the most.
I will never be her, but I'm obsessed with Parvati. [ Laughs .] I love her. She's just such chaos, but she knows what her strengths are. And everyone should know what your strengths are, and just use that. You don't need to fit your mold. You don't need to become someone, which is why I can say I'm never going to be a Parvati. But I love that she's able to hone in, know what her strengths are, and then use that to be able to manipulate the whole situation and be in control of it as well. I'm not a flirtatious person; I'm not gonna do that. But I know what strengths I do have to be able to do exactly the same.
And then someone who didn't win, but I also really, really enjoy how they played, I'm gonna go a bit more recent, and I think Carson. I really liked the fact that he was very much under the radar until he wasn't. And I think that's a brilliant way to play. You need to be friendly, you need to be strategic, you need to know what your strengths are and the challenges and every single aspect of it. He was someone that people really trusted in. And no one really kind of caught on that he was such a strong player until he did get caught, unfortunately. Which, again, there's ways of downplaying your strengths, and he didn't do that as well. But you just need to be able to stay in that nice, minimal zone of being under the radar, but still being able to insert your influence. Going back to what I was saying, keep in the back of your mind what tasks need to be done and do those. But you don't need to put yourself into the spotlight too early. And I think he did a really good job of that.
Related: Everything to Know About Survivor 47
What is your biggest superpower and biggest piece of kryptonite in life that you will bring into the game? Is it that prioritization you were just talking about?
Yes. I am very good at, in EM, we call it triaging. It's basically prioritizing. It's keeping a laundry list in your head of every single thing that constantly needs to happen and, in real-time, updating it. Because you never know when a sicker patient is going to walk through the door and get bumped to the top of the list. You never know when something more pressing is going to come up in terms of strategy, or something that's a detriment to your strategy, and you need to push that to the top of the list. So you can't get stuck on one game plan. You can't get stuck on one thing, one task. I think even in Survivor , you can't just be like, "Okay, I'm focused on getting this person out." You can't do that. You have to constantly be shuffling it because things are constantly changing. And I do think that's going to be a huge strength of mine, because I think people get so set in their ways, and it's hard for them to not just have a "kill list" and go for it, versus you need to be keeping up with what's happening around you, absorbing new information.
I think [for] kryptonite, I am a very empathetic person. And with that, I'm learning, since I'm still kind of gaining my footing as being an ER doc. I've learned to compartmentalize very well. But I'm very empathetic. I worry if someone's able to construe a story or say something that pulls my strings. It's really hard. I know I need to separate things like game from personal lives. But I do worry, and I'm very aware that that might be my downfall, not being able to separate those two aspects. But, again, I'm very aware of that, and I know I need to do that. And I do that on a daily basis where, I go from that stab wound to the stubbed toe, and I'm able to keep my emotions intact. But it's still something that comes with the field of a very strong empathetic compass, moral compass. So I think that's something I need to be wary of.
Let's talk about your competition. From the observations you've been making in the pregame, is there anyone you currently see as someone you will/won't work with?
So immediately, the best vibes I've gotten so from have been from–I think his name is KO. This white dude, the scruffy beard, wears a hat. Big fan of him. I feel like he's very observant. He's been the only one who, in addition to me, has observed the structure and the building that we're in, and kind of just been looking around. And, in addition, is always friendly, smiles. I noticed he takes his plates up to the front. I don't know, just a very kind human being. I love the vibe. There's certain people who you can smile at or you see their general demeanor, and it's very kind and happy. And I gravitate towards those people. And there's certain people who I haven't gotten those vibes.
Talk to me about that.
Oh, my God. Okay. So there's TC, short hair, kind of short person. Every single time I smile, they don't smile back. I sit directly across from them, and…just nothing. I'm like, "Come on. Literally, all we can do right now is just share a small little grin." And nothing back. I also haven't gotten great vibes from AW. African-American, curly-haired girl. Again, similar. I actually was on the shuttle with them to the hotel, and I kind of assumed that they were also on the show, because [they're a] young person with one to two big pieces of luggage, not really talking or interacting around. And they, again, didn't really smile or give me any reciprocal feedback, or any emotions back. So not really getting a good [vibe].
Another person, small, petite, white woman. Really nice, but she's so clumsy. She's been so messy so far. At the airport, she assumed one of the contestants was one of the crew people. I was like, "Girl, how did you not notice? We were all standing in the circle, and you saw each other's face. How did you think this person was a crew person and not one of us? You need to be way more observant than that, girl." [ Laughs .]
What’s your biggest takeaway from the past two seasons of Survivor that you plan to bring into your game?
I definitely think that the gameplay has just been so much more elevated. I feel like we say this every year, but it gets more and more lstrategic, more and more cutthroat. And I think the reason for that is people are way more just observant and understanding of the social nuances that come with conversations. I think, before, people probably took things verbatim. Versus now, people are a lot more skilled at understanding the small nuances that come when people say something in a certain way. Or just having a larger, I think, emotional intelligence and being able to pick up on those small cues. And I personally anticipate carrying that forward into this season.
And I will be. As I've already said to you, the judgments I made on people, just [without] any words being said. I think a lot of people are going to be doing that. Like we saw in Season 46, [four] consecutive people went home with an idol. And those mistakes were made because they weren't picking up on the small nuances that they should have been. And all of that could be avoided if you pick up on those nuances. And I feel like the reason that's happening is because people are just becoming way better at concealing and being able to strategize and keep that away from them. And I think that's just going to continue, because that's the exciting and brilliant part of the game!
What's your hottest Survivor take?
I'm just saying, we need to go back to two tribes. We need to bring back the auction every single year. We need to get rid of the journeys. No more of this journey BS. The journeys, they're old. They're canceled. We're done.
So if a boat shows up at your camp, you're saying, "I'm good" to the opportunity?
I'm not going. If you see, every single time, no one believes. No matter how true you are, no one will believe you. There's still going to be that one person who's like, "Oh, I think they're lying," even though they said verbatim everything that happened. And then it creates doubts. Like, "Oh, this person might have this." And that could be beneficial, but it often makes you an easy target too to be blindsided at any point. So I'm not going for it. The risks are way higher than the benefits. So I just think we get rid of them. And I'm not volunteering for that.
What celebrity or fictional character would you bring out for a loved ones visit?
I mean, there's so many people that I want to bring out. There's so many people I want to meet, because I would also be meeting them for the first time. Okay, I'm bringing my homegirl Cirie. I get to meet her. She can give me pointers. She's just someone I feel like I can have a fun conversation with. I love her vibes. I'm bringing Cirie. I know that's lame, that it's Survivor- related. But I really, really like her so much. And she'd be such a fun person to bring out and just gab with. She's so real. I love her.
Next, check out our interview with Survivor 47 contestant Genevieve Mushaluk .
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