Doctors are not Gods because...

I am posting this blog on the occassion of Doctors Day

THE IDEAL
I became a doctor because my father was a doctor. It had nothing to do with genetics or family tradition or any of the other rigmarole
It was plain and simple because my father was my ideal. He was a graduate from among the oldest medical institute in the country, the King George Medical College, Lucknow in the year 1935
He joined the Jaipur State medical service and used to receive Rs 35 as salary in the form of silver coins, the jharshashi rupaiya
I watched him as I grew and this is what I recollect, and adore
His patients loved him. There was a deep sense of gratitude in every patient he had treated and cured. As a result it was not infrequent for these poor village folk to bring fruits and vegetables and other farm products as gifts, whatever they produced, whatever they could afford. They derived genuine pleasure from giving, and I could sense the satisfaction of achievement on the one hand and the unqualified gratitude on the other. It is this which drove me to the decision to become a doctor
I felt no other profession gives this kind of satisfaction and a sense of achievement. No other profession carries this kind of respect. I have yet to come across an administrative bigwig introduce himself by name and not by designation. It is always “I am secretary this, or IG that”, and never have I seen any doctor introduce himself other than by “I am Dr so and so” Such is the inherent dignity in the title Dr
This is why I became a doctor
THE IDOL
It is not hard to imagine how this adulation, this admiration, this respect turned into a mortal worship. Somewhere down the line the Doctor became God for the patient and the public. “Khuda tarash liya aur bandigi kar li”. Did the doctors ask for it? NO, I don’t think so. I don’t think any of the doctors old or aged working in villages or cities and townships ever expected or insisted that they be treated as God and worshipped. It was spontaneous on the part of the patient for someone who they thought had done what God does, namely gave life to the dying, relieved the misery of the suffering. To them,like God,they appeared to work miracles.
No doctor can perform miracles or even attempt to. A doctor treats. Death or life is not in his hands.
Their mistake is for taking the credit for this too long. The news channels have been terming doctors as Gods and seething how can doctors ignore patient’s misery.
DOCTORS ARE NOT GODS. Get this straight. NO doctor ever asked to be labeled as God. It is all society’s halo placed on unwilling heads. Please understand their limitations .THEY ARE HUMANS, like everyone else, just as prone to failure and mistakes. It is the doctor’s misfortune that his work milieu is alive and a live object. Did we deserve to be so revered? Maybe, maybe not. What is important and pertinent is that we accepted this, enjoyed the adulations, and even came to take them for granted. We had been accepting them for years, nay generations and this became the norm. I am reminded of a movie by Satyajit Ray ‘Devi’ It was the story of a housewife who accidentally or coincidentally performs some acts which are miraculous and on the instigation of the village folk begins to imagine herself as a Goddess incarnate, She gets so carried away in the delusion that she begins to believe in it absolutely till her own niece whom she adores falls seriously ill, and convinced that she can cure her by her divine powers, lets her die.
Something similar jolted us back into reality and that jolt was the need, the lure for money
THE URGE
Doctors were entering the medical colleges on the basis of a merit exam. It took the cream away from the career aspirants. Yet they were lowly paid. Their contemporaries who couldn’t make it went into other services and business and business administration,and started making money,lots of it. The natural question was why not me
Slowly the profession had its compassion and benevolence replaced by a craving for money. It had three effects.
It made the profession into a trade and the patients a commodity
It established medicine as a lucrative proposition with an ever increasing number of aspirants
It lowered the standards of patient care by increasing the indications for investigations and surgery and decreasing the inclination to be merciful and kind
All the glory and the gold again had two fall outs, an increasing reservation of seats for entry of the less meritorious and the mushrooming of private medical schools as money spinners
THE RETURN
The quest to become a doctor has not diminished, albeit it has grown manifold. With this growing quest has come the proposition and reality of diminishing number of seats in medical schools. What resulted was the mushrooming of a host of private medical schools, where seats could be had sans the hard work and merit, through the backdoor may be, all for a price, and there were hordes of parents willing to shell out any amount so that their wards could become doctors and start minting money or join those who were already doing so. Consequently, one heard of sums running into lakhs paid for admissions. Is it illogical to assume that these sums have to be recovered? No one, not even someone who is not a businessman, can perceive making dead investments of such magnitude. Money has to be recovered, and that is where the decline begins.
THE FALL
Two factors contributed or were attributed to the doctors fall from grace
The doctor’s efforts to make money were perceived as exploiting the misery of the patient.
What came under the hammer were the Physicians prescriptions for writing unnecessary drugs or drugs for commission and the surgeon for performing unnecessary surgery or charging exorbitant fees
There are umpteen number of drug companies manufacturing drugs. Assuming that all multinational companies manufacture high quality drugs, there is still a plethora of similar drugs in the market. Give me one reason why I should prescribe one reputed company’s drug over another, all criterion being equal. Because they send me regular multicolored brochures? Because their representatives regularly call upon me and encroach on my time to remind me of products which I remember anyway? Or because they leave my table loaded with free samples I don’t need, and have a hard time giving them way because my patients don’t need them either? Or because that particular company gives him gifts, or may be takes him to conferences to brush up his professional knowledge and skill. Take your pick.
There is a hue and cry to force the doctors to prescribe only generic drugs. Fair enough, but when a generic prescription goes out in the market, who dispenses the company brand? The chemist, and remember he is a trader, a businessman., and will ALWAYS give the brand with the maximum profit margin. Trusting him to do otherwise is like trusting Shylock, of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, to dispense with his pound of flesh.
The surgeons were accused of doing surgeries for profit and extending indications for greed
I doubt if the CPA left them with much choice, to err on the side of commission rather than omission
Life isn’t easy by way of expenses, and I am sure labeling as GOD feeds no mouth. Is it hard to comprehend why an Asstt Professor in Govt service who is paid Rs.23000 per month chooses to resign and go to a private hospital on a salary of Rs 95000 per month? It can mean only two things. Either the Govt was fleecing and cheating the poor bloke, or the Private hospital owner is a crack pot who is hell bent on floundering his establishment by hiring doctors at such exorbitant pay packets. Or maybe he is the one who knows the doctor’s true worth.
GODS don’t need money, they shouldn’t ask for money. GODS in our country have to be stones, and yet have a heart that bleeds for everyone
The media, by hounding the medical fraternity for all the wrongs, committed and uncommitted, is pushing all of them into a corner. This could only be the beginning of worse ends. Watch it.