The Unsung Heroes – Doctors on Duty or the Media

I was deeply influenced by the line I read somewhere “ When a man sleeps he thinks of his love, and when a doctor sleeps he thinks about his patient”. I thought about it for a while and realized, in fact it is true. What do we all think of before we go to sleep most of the times? Actually most of the time a treating physician or surgeon is busy mentally about his/her patients.

Now the second question is – “How much have we devoted for this noble profession”? If you retrospect yourself, most of you’ll realize that almost everything has been devoted. When was the last time you had a family picnic? When was the last holiday you had? When have you been free of thoughts of hospital and patients and have only thought about yourself? How many families have been broken due to this hectic schedule? How many occasions have you missed just because you had night duty or a call?

The Third question is- Do we deserve those social harassment promoted by media? Are we answerable to all the immense expectations that people have from us? Or should we explain them that miracles and god are not us, we are humans like you.

Let me be more descriptive.

Scenario 1: A mother was bleeding profusely of postpartum hemorrhage. She had to undergo hysterectomy urgently but before that the profound shock that developed would claim her life.  Luckily a dozen of medical students heard the announcement and rushed to help her. 9 or 10 students donated blood that night before she could be salvaged. These guys were the heroes, who saved a life. They did not come for media light or for any other benefit but out of seer humanity. Luckily there was no media to embarrass them; luckily no body sang their song.

Scenario 2: A poor patient appears in the ER. The child has severe pneumonia and is in distress. X rays show a big pleural effusion. The father was so poor that he killed all his expectations voluntarily and demanded to take child back home. The resident attending the child is in dilemma. He deposits the admission fund for the patient, searches for chest tube and other medications in the departments. Next day the child looks more comfortable, the father looks very grateful. He is transferred to a free bed. Luckily no media heard about this or would care about this, thus he didn’t have to feel embarrassed for what he had done.

Scenario 3: An infant was brought with legs amputated. The mother was mentally ill and father was out of contact that night. The on duty doctors had the child, no guardians. The infant got preliminary treatment and was admitted to Pediatric ICU all with their effort. The child could be saved. There were dozens of agencies, NGOs and charities visiting the child for next one week. Everyone came and snapped some photos with the child, spoke some words of sympathy but the deed of the doctors and nurses went unnoticed.

All these scenarios are real ones. They do not ask for the credit here, they do not demand the media light nor do they want any songs to be sung on these stories.

I wanted to show, that something more than treatment is going on at hospitals every day. Every night some doctor, nurse or staff is donating blood for patient. Everyday they are arranging free medicines or equipment for the patients and these aren’t for credit. We do it out of our interest and dedication for our patients.

So is media doing justice to them? Isn’t the irresponsible media ruining the aspiration of thousands of new coming doctors by publishing articles like those published in “setopati” . It is obvious that students and intern doctors practice in Medical Colleges and Teaching Hospitals, they have the right to. Coming to teaching hospital it self is a consent to that the students can study them. It is no where written in the ethics of doctor that any of their activity is allowed to harm their patient. Everything we do is patient directed. No doctors  wants his patient to suffer or die, because it is his failure as well and a big setback to his ego. So people and media should change their perspective towards the medical personals, at least should not generalize things and discredit the hardworking people who are on duty for 24 hours for your welfare. There are setbacks to this profession for sure, there are fields where improvements and amendments are needed but let this remain a NOBLE PROFESSION, let the image of Doctors be preserved, else there will be a surge of negative impacts on the society.

“A doctor heals half the disease, half is healed by the patients confidence”, If patient cannot confide on the treating doctor or is always suspicious about the therapy, there will be a problem for sure. This condition can be promoted by what the couple of cheap newspapers and online news sites are promoting for sake of mere publicity and spice.

So, we as doctors as well should build a good professional relation with the patients and build confidence in them, so next time, such media cannot stir and break the relation between us.