What is our general perception of a doctor especially about the ones who are famous. That you go to them and they will know what they have to do and understand immediately why a patient is in a condition which she is in! They will be humble, reassuring, loving to the patient and also to the relatives. They will be demi Gods to us. They will ensure that they and people under them will be perfectionists. They in all their might would make the patient feel better by involving as many specialist as possible. They will not make money making their sole aim. They will not try to get rid of a patient if the patients problem is not their specialization. They will not try to get rid of the patient and her family. Most importantly they will not have bloated ego of the size of a planet. Also they are not part of dirty politics which our country is suffering from. They will treat all humans alike and with utmost care and respect.
But unfortunately, its not the case. Doctors which I encountered in last one month had none of these qualities. They needed first to understand that we have strong hold in Bhubaneswar and make all important people call from all directions to make them work. Until then they were ready to give up. Until then they were ready to take drastic steps of discharging the patient in a condition where she is not well even in my layman eyes. They could not solve a simple problem of loose motions in 12 days time and let the patient suffer because they had some bloated ego massaging to be done before they could realize that they were doctors.
Finally when the panel of doctors did receive calls from all the direction, courtesy my fathers contacts, they started working. They were ready to give up otherwise. Our frustration level was going to high levels. We couldn’t say them anything and we couldn’t keep quite as well. Saying them would mean leaving our patient completely at the doctor’s ego. Keeping mum would have meant doing absolutely nothing and waiting was life to take its own turn. We couldn’t let that happen. I wonder what these people have studied in so many years. Have they just learnt how to make money. The best of the best cardiologists and gastroenterologist were not able to make the patient comfortable. They were not able to cure the patient and asked us to just wait and watch, advised us to pray and kept there fingers crossed. How MD, DMs, gastro-surgeons, couldn’t figure out what the real problem was. And one fine day the patient herself started recovering and they still couldn’t pin-point what the problem ever was!
The doctors know that the moment they have made a visit to the patient and come out of ICCU, they would be stopped by attendants of patient to know about the condition of the patient. These were the doctors who never bothered to stop to tell the details. We had to run behind them, literally stop him from walking further and ask what is the patient’s situation today and the maximum sentence framing they could do was one sentence consisting of 5-7 words. Is that all that we would like to know after you have asked us to pray to God? Shouldn’t there be professional way of handling patients attendants too! Shouldn’t you be briefing us every 2-3 days when we have stayed there for a month. Don’t we deserve this much in the name of humanity. Any Tom, Dick and Harry becomes a doctor these days without any sense of service, respect for humanity or respect for anyone’s age. My father at 70 with a limp in his leg used to run after these egoistic set of people, half his age, to know how our patient was and I couldn’t do much but just sigh and feel sad; I saw a bigger need of the moment and kept quite.
The most astonishing and pleasing revelation was that the attendants/ sisters/ brothers inside the ICCU were more human and affectionate set of people who really took awesome care of our patient. They literally stood on a leg to be at patient’s service and helped the patient throughout. At-least they tried to bring a smile on patient’s face with their service, talks, care, love and affection. Doctors were just too mechanical. Any patient patient is just a patient and loosing a patient means nothing to them; on the contrary it meant the world to us.
There are many more heart-breaking facts and incidents that happened in the past one month but I would prefer to stop at this.
If at-least one doctor reads this, takes the content positively, works towards improvement of his/ her behavior in general, leaves the craze to be treated as God, and gives only his/ her best shot at work, I would consider myself lucky; as one doctor in his lifetime treats innumerable patients. At-least those set of patients will not be treated the way our patient and we were treated by a panel of well-known doctors.
A few words from me to all the doctors who wanted to become doctors because there was money in this profession and not because you wanted to serve the society; you guys have turned this into a cheap profession. All you guys want to do is earn lot of money, marry another doctor, together mint money, open a nursing home and lead a lavish life style. You guys are meant to serve the society, please do that. If you didn't have the sense of humanity ever in you, you might as well leave this service and open a shop and do business, convert those nursing homes into lodges/ five-star hotels. That would at-least do some good to the society. Otherwise you are doing more harm than benefit. The only benefit you are doing is to your pockets. Please stop it and turn this profession into a noble profession which it originally is meant to be.