My institute is in the news for all the wrong reasons. It makes me feel as though public doesn't understand the medical profession. It's probably since we're a closed community. I have explained at least a dozen times to my family that a "night duty" lasts for 36 hours, from a morning to the next evening. Yet they still assume that it means a night shift, probably a maximum of lasting 12 hours.
Is it so hard to fathom? Over 3 years into it, I can't believe that it's unimaginable for many.
Being a doctor isn't just a profession like any other; it's a way of life. You can't eat as often as you'd like, you often have to hold in your "nature calls" until you have a suitable time to attend to them. This isn't confined to any single person. We as a group don't live our life as impulsively as the general population, because a practising doctor knows what's at stake if he doesn't do his job properly; when the situation demands it, we voluntarily give up our lunch in favour of a critical patient and don't consider it a big deal because that's how we would want our loved ones, or even ourselves to be treated if needed.
We understand that our right to basic necessities aren't before another person's right to live and be healthy. We don't bestow health upon those who don't have it as if we are Gods. We do whatever best we can as humans, knowing the weight of our actions is much heavier to the patient than to us.
We don't get maternity or marriage "leaves", we replace our duties with others who are willing to compensate for our work and take our patients under their wing, and we do the same even when we're sick. Even if I had an accident and was seriously injured on the way to my duty, as long as I was conscious I would try my best to convey to my hospital that someone would have to cover my shift for me. Whatever reason I don't turn up for, my absence means a lack of hands resulting in suboptimal patient care and possibly loss of life. And that has priority in my mind.
This culture is understood amongst those already habituated to the profession, but newbies take some time to grasp the significance of what they're doing and how much of their lifestyle the job demands.
We don't leave early without a replacement. We've all done many-a-duty abusing painkillers, and delaying our check-ups to our doctors in the ways we tell patients not to. And I personally hold no one responsible for this except myself, who chose this profession over everything else.
All of us have been scolded by our seniors and at the same time they've taught us what we need to learn to earn a living for the rest of our lives. Being scolded by a well wishing senior is far better than having a lawsuit against me one day for lack of proper training. Even worse, it's better than losing or harming the lives that were meant to be treated better by a person with my degree.
We get trained for the hardships to come during the first year, and a good senior trains his/her juniors to be sincere and efficient during their first year of post-graduation.
This first year on the job is when we work the hardest, learn the most and push our limits to make better doctors out of ourselves. This year makes us feel tortured, pained and stressed. It's the year we idly contemplate suicide as the easiest way out of this spiral we're now stuck in forever.
It always feels like we're singled out in this. But when we interact with others, we often find that we are in the same boat together with our peers. And when we hold out, we get to be a part of what I regard as the best profession in the world.
It's worth it, for the feeling we get when we resuscitate our first patient, deliver our first healthy baby, conduct our first painless surgery; the achievement differs according to the specialisation. For the first heartfelt "thank you" for which you're responsible. I'm deeply saddened to know that a young soul didn't make it far enough to feel those amazing things.
Maybe there are inherent flaws in our system. Maybe there is a lot to learn from foreign countries where training from MBBS to residency takes much longer than the 10 years it takes here. Maybe there is much more to be done for more even distribution of stress management over the years, standardisation of treatment protocols, and legalisation of a proper pecking order within the profession.
We mustn't normalise illegal hierarchy, or ragging, or harassment. Then also, we shouldn't normalise the high expectations we have from our doctors to be Gods and give us everything we want when we demand it. We shouldn't normalise how severely understaffed we are and how junior doctors do many things they aren't meant to do. We shouldn't normalise young doctors working themselves to the point of hospitalisation. When a terminal patient is brought in and subsequently dies, we shouldn't normalise the relatives beating the doctor to death. Where's the news coverage on all these? Very rarely do we feel justice in our lives. So we train hard, to make our bodies work in overdrive so that we don't go wrong, even where normal humans would usually go wrong.
The weight of this training can't be called as "ragging". And the blame definitely cannot be borne by a single person.
