Sitting on a comfortable chair, in an air conditioned room, with almost pin- drop silence, hp EliteBook turned on, sipping my delicious morning coffee and what am I doing? Reading a medical article that boasts about how we have been able to discover a million dollar drug to cure an XYZ disease? NO. Reading a new book that I recently bought from a book store? NO. Facebooking? NO. Googling? NO. I am going through confidential medical files of 3 patients who were either brought dead to ER or expired within an hour of presentation. Although I absolutely savor each sip of my coffee and enjoy the comfortable environment of my workplace, but those three files (read dead bodies) made everything around me distasteful.
Many of you might think I am over-reacting because those are just a few pieces of paper. Right? Literally, yes but figuratively, NO. If those files belonged to (God forbid) any of my dear ones, I wouldn’t have been able to go through them without shedding a tear or without the need to muster up highest level of courage and strength and had I sipped my coffee the way I did now? You know the answer. I could not go through each file without thinking about how young the patient was to suffer such injuries, what his family must have felt when death was declared to them, I check the date of expiry and try to feel what the family would have been feeling now after one or two weeks of their family member’s eternal departure, how they might be re-adjusting to their new life, how a mother would have felt when her teenage daughter succumbed to a gun shot injury within 2 days of admission, how devastated the kids would have been when all they brought their mother for was some fever and she was no more after 2 days. So, NO, those are not just lifeless papers lying on my desk, they are documents that have stories of their own, stories that have affected an entire family in more ways than you can imagine, stories that have ability to jolt your existence and give you a reality check like no other.
The profession of healthcare can become a huge business with patients being customers and hospitals being the service providers. The only thing that separates healthcare customers from a customer who walks into a computer shop to buy a laptop is ‘sensitivity’. It is so easy to say out loud this eleven lettered word but trust me it is the most difficult and challenging task to have it stay in doctors’ hearts, minds, words and actions at ALL times. I have seen some colleagues joke around while reviewing mortality files about patient’s injuries and events that led to his demise because for many of us it is just a file. It’s not like the patient or his family is there to see them. And at that very moment, those doctors, no matter how skillful they were and no matter how well-versed they happened to be in their field of specialty, they could not find their way in my good books.
A common perception is that a good doctor is the one who does no harm and saves lives and I cannot deny that but this definition is incomplete without the mention of ‘sensitivity’ and ‘empathy’ and the demonstration of these two qualities not only in front of the alive and conscious patient and his family but also in front of intubated, unconscious dying patient or even his file that remains his only physical representation. How about saying a silent prayer for every ‘expiry’ that I review for my mortality meeting?
Money, the power to heal, the power to be in control of things, the ability to discover something new every now and then and hence bring change around us makes us healthcare professionals so mesmerized that we tend to deviate away from the one thing that we, the physicians, had sworn as Hippocratic Oath, the soul and cornerstone of this profession i.e. – “Humanity”.
For my fellow doctors who happen to read it, just a little reminder of what we had sworn once, the following are relevant excerpts of the Hippocratic Oath:
Many of you might think I am over-reacting because those are just a few pieces of paper. Right? Literally, yes but figuratively, NO. If those files belonged to (God forbid) any of my dear ones, I wouldn’t have been able to go through them without shedding a tear or without the need to muster up highest level of courage and strength and had I sipped my coffee the way I did now? You know the answer. I could not go through each file without thinking about how young the patient was to suffer such injuries, what his family must have felt when death was declared to them, I check the date of expiry and try to feel what the family would have been feeling now after one or two weeks of their family member’s eternal departure, how they might be re-adjusting to their new life, how a mother would have felt when her teenage daughter succumbed to a gun shot injury within 2 days of admission, how devastated the kids would have been when all they brought their mother for was some fever and she was no more after 2 days. So, NO, those are not just lifeless papers lying on my desk, they are documents that have stories of their own, stories that have affected an entire family in more ways than you can imagine, stories that have ability to jolt your existence and give you a reality check like no other.
The profession of healthcare can become a huge business with patients being customers and hospitals being the service providers. The only thing that separates healthcare customers from a customer who walks into a computer shop to buy a laptop is ‘sensitivity’. It is so easy to say out loud this eleven lettered word but trust me it is the most difficult and challenging task to have it stay in doctors’ hearts, minds, words and actions at ALL times. I have seen some colleagues joke around while reviewing mortality files about patient’s injuries and events that led to his demise because for many of us it is just a file. It’s not like the patient or his family is there to see them. And at that very moment, those doctors, no matter how skillful they were and no matter how well-versed they happened to be in their field of specialty, they could not find their way in my good books.
A common perception is that a good doctor is the one who does no harm and saves lives and I cannot deny that but this definition is incomplete without the mention of ‘sensitivity’ and ‘empathy’ and the demonstration of these two qualities not only in front of the alive and conscious patient and his family but also in front of intubated, unconscious dying patient or even his file that remains his only physical representation. How about saying a silent prayer for every ‘expiry’ that I review for my mortality meeting?
Money, the power to heal, the power to be in control of things, the ability to discover something new every now and then and hence bring change around us makes us healthcare professionals so mesmerized that we tend to deviate away from the one thing that we, the physicians, had sworn as Hippocratic Oath, the soul and cornerstone of this profession i.e. – “Humanity”.
For my fellow doctors who happen to read it, just a little reminder of what we had sworn once, the following are relevant excerpts of the Hippocratic Oath:
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
