21/06/2021
Refuse Abuse, Doctors!
© Dr. Rajas Deshpande
To every frustrated young doctor out there,
Please remember, you are one of the best human beings there can be. You have chosen to spend your single precious life and especially youth to be among those who need humanity most. Please learn the art of dealing with the immense negativity that surrounds us medical professionals, healthcare workers in these times.
People vent out all their anger and fear by shouting at us, blaming us, openly questioning our intentions and expecting a slavery-like service. Some politicians squeeze out our blood and sweat to please the society. Our own colleagues who have insecurities and participate in the unethical practices try to show us down, sabotage our careers. Some bloated-ego seniors and admins take pleasure in fault-finding, humiliation and defamation. Many a genius specialists suffocate in corporate hospitals because they need a multispeciality backup and cannot invest on their own, nor does government service offer them good treatment or remuneration. Rural healthcare has too many unresolved issues shoved under the political carpet. © Dr. Rajas Deshpande
The condition of the clinicians is worst: we have to face (many times every day) a perpetually paranoid, health-illiterate society which thinks that every illness is the doctors fault. Add too much hope-marketing of dubious healthcare products with false claims: we don’t mind if people want to eat them by kilos, but we have to face the double tragedy of having to answer many irrelevant questions about them and then to deal with their adverse effects which are difficult to relate or prove. Every side effect, every adverse event is automatically presumed to be the Modern / Allopathic doctor’s fault. If you share your mobile number to help someone in an emergency out of kindness, that becomes a continuous health chat channel, an abuse and exploitation beyond expression- it is as if one consultation has bought you all the doctor’s remaining lifetime for free! Imagine hundreds of such messages every day! © Dr. Rajas Deshpande
People who see so much poverty around themselves conveniently blind themselves to it but expect healthcare workers to have “humanity and compassion”. These hypocrites can feed the poor, shelter the homeless in their homes, buy the poor medical insurance etc., but they will expect that it’s only the job of doctors and hospital staff to help the poor. The less we talk about a biased, sold-out and sensational-crazy media, the better. What can be more sensational, more news-worthy, more fascinating and amazing than saved lives?
We all share these woes, but medicine is far above the entire society, its politicians and even its perception. Medicine is about applying the highest human abilities for learning how to treat the sick, what best to advise them, how to save lives and also how to heal minds. Not everyone can understand the learning process that involves life and death, not everyone can grasp the scientific, analytical mindset required. Not everyone can understand these higher responsibilities and the higher sacrifices we make. © Dr. Rajas Deshpande
This post is just to tell my healthcare colleagues that we must stay together and positive, that there’s so much more to medicine than the medicolegal fears which have continuously downhearted us.
Let us learn. some new arts in medicine: how to lead and steer the discussion on the correct lines, how to softly turn down discussing irrelevant and unrelated questions, how to refuse to repeat the same discussion during every consult. Let us learn to refuse giving out personal phone numbers. Let us learn to gently refuse misuse of compassion and abuse of kindness. Let us refuse to accept anger and impoliteness as routine patient behavior. Let us learn to accept that the media and society are unlikely to change, and that we should stay united and firmly fight against what’s unfair to the good we represent.
We are doctors, and to treat the comatose, unconscious, violent and impaired is our sacred chosen duty: individual or community. Let us rise above the abuse swamp with intelligent solutions. Refuse to reply the irrelevant. Refuse Abuse.
© Dr. Rajas Deshpande
