The cost of being human

As human beings we are all born with some humane traits.. As we grow we either remain same , or develop them or regress to inhuman nature. I believe that you might have watched the films Munna Bhai MBBS and Patch Adams , where the Professor says , “ We are not here to make friends , we are here to become doctors. Does being doctor prevent you from coming close to patients or should it?

Once during my MBBS internship, I was doing casualty duty. It was a very busy day when none of the residents on duty was not able to sit even for a while. A young girl was admitted in the ward with meningitis at a very critical stage. Usually a doctor is posted in the ward to take care of such cases , but unfortunately none was available there . The relatives of the patient approached the casualty complaining about the condition of their child. My casualty ward was full of patients and I was not in charge of the ward patients , however they insisted on seeing the child. As the child was in deplorable condition , I ,with great difficulty, arranged someone to look after the casualty and decided to have a look. The child was having severe infection and was in altered sensorium. She was receiving all the required medication and all we could do was to wait for the medicines to start acting. I explained the situation to the parents of the child and returned to my ever busy casualty. Unfortunately the child succumbed to the disease and as usual the mob was berserk. I was called by the investigating committee for enquiry and the matter was settled. Three years after the incident I received a letter from the Superintendent of our college to give explanation for the mishap that day. Even though it was just a matter of writing that I was not my duty in the ward that day , I felt the sorry of getting involved in such an incident which I had nothing to do. Now , if I had just concealed my human part and stayed away taking care of the matters of the casualty I would have been spared of all the trouble.

We had a senior doctor who was very passionate to her patients. Usually when we discharge patients from the ward, they are supposed to get their dressing done at the minor operation theatre at the out-patient department. The waiting line at the minor operation theatre is usually long and patients find it difficult to wait for hours. Our senior doctor had a patient who needed dressing daily for nearly a month. So she took pity on the patients and used to do the dressing in the ward. One day as she was very busy with the ward duties and asked a patient to get dressing done at the minor operation theatre. The patient straight away went to the professor and complained that our senior used to take money from him for dressing in the ward and refused that day since he did not give her money for once. The doctor was thus humiliated for being sincere to her patient. If only she had concealed her humane part and asked the patient to queue and get the dressing done at the minor operation theatre, she would have escaped from the torment.

The other day one of our consultants remembered how a patient hit by some vehicle and left unattended and was brought to the hospital by a hospital staff itself. He was in a very bad state when he reached the emergency. A deep cut wound to his neck had drained most of his blood and he was immediately was taken to the hospital. The residents ran a marathon between the operation theatre and the blood bank to arrange fourteen bottles of blood. I have never been able to arrange more than four bottle of blood for any patient. More than ten is virtually impossible. Fortunately the patient survived. He was later called to a TV programme and asked to narrate his experience at the hospital. To everyone’s astonishment and without any scruples he said that he had received a very poor medical care from the hospital. Our department and hospital would not have been humiliated if the residents had not been over enthusiastic about arranging blood.

Few years back I read an article in a magazine about the plight of an ayurvedic doctor. He had given some medicine to his patient and the patient developed paralysis after taking it. The relatives and local people got angry and created chaos at his clinic. The doctor who was quite sure that this could not have been due to his medicine, volunteered to consume the drug himself to prove his innocence not knowing that wife of his patient has poisoned the medicine to get rid of her husband the doctor was paralyzed for the rest of his life.

A few years ago a patient was brought to a private hospital with head injury following road traffic accident. As it was a clear case of head injury and the hospital was not equipped with neuro-care the doctor referred the patient to higher centre. But the relative was adamant to admit the patient there for first aid care. But the doctor knowing the futility of loosing valuable time insisted on taking the patient to safer place. The patient died on his way and the people attacked the hospital. I say that the doctor should have admitted the patient , painted his bruises and added some income to his hospital. So what if the patient died , he would have satisfied the crowd and saved his skin. I remember when my father met with an accident and sustained head injury the resident doctor at the primary centre had called me to inform the status. I immediately advised the doctor to transfer my father to a higher centre.

One of my relatives was telling me the story of his friend who developed chest discomfort and taken to a private hospital. They did an electrocardiography and seeing that his condition was normal, the patient was sent back for resting at home. But that night he was admitted with heart attack. He was trying to tell me the ignorance of the doctor misdiagnosing a heart attack for something trivial. Prodromal or early symptoms of heart attack are very much similar to gastritis and are often mistaken. So whenever a patient comes with similar complaints it is a protocol to admit him in intensive care unit and observe for at least 24 hours. Seeing the financial condition of the patient, the doctor must have advised against ICU admission , which quite surprised me as private hospitals might do anything to get money. If he had followed the protocol and admitted the patient it would have cost the patient around Rs 15 000 and it turned out to be a mere gastritis , the same person would tell that the doctor robbed the patient.

People who say that doctor should be more humane would never accept that doctors are prone to err. The more one is human, the more he is guided by emotions and the more he is prone to mistakes. Well I don’t think that people consider doctors as human beings at all. The are not supposed to voice for a fair pay or the basic minimum hours of rest, but who cares. Never forget that Munna of Munna bhai could not stand his patient’s death and decided to quite and patch Adams , lost his love who was killed by his psychotic patient. So to be , or not to be human is still an intriguing question that remains unanswered as far as I am concerned..

The eldest son