A Promise by a Future Doctor.

Think for a minute honestly.
Is it you who chose which bank account to open and what to do with it?
Is it you who decide/d what you want to be taught (atleast in college if not school)?
What you want to eat when you're sitting at your favourite restaurant?
Where and how your house should be built?
What mobile offers you want? Or what internet plan you want?
I bet your answer would be a "yes" to most of these questions.

But is it you who decide what treatment is appropriate, what tablets to take, for how many days, what alarming signs you should look for and when should the treatment be changed for your particular illness? (unless you are a doctor yourself, it would be a "no")
Do you now see the problem I do? 

For the efficient delivery of any tertiary sector service, the participation of both the parties, the service provider and the receiver would be important. Then why should health sector be an exception to this? Why should we dump the complete responsibility of treating an illness on a doctor and make it inefficient? (unless the doctor is a superman :P).
I believe it's easy for health sector to become a one sided participation because of the low health literacy among the common people.
The importance of letting the patient know what your treatment plan/regimen can not be overstressed especially when it comes to management of chronic illnesses and while dealing with many co-morbid conditions .
This example might explain it better.  
Suppose I started treating a patient Y for a particular condition and I have the protocol of management clear in my mind."5 days of injection and then I'll switch to oral therapy for a month", I think and prescribe the injections for 5 days forgetting to tell him my complete plan or to document it anywhere. Y comes to me after 5 days with a new symptom of his illness. Now I get involved in the management of the new symptom completely forgetting to put him on oral therapy for the previous problem as thought earlier.
Let me rewind and change the story a bit.
Lets say I prescribe him the injections for 5 days and take an extra minute to tell him my plan of switching to oral therapy after 5 days and document it.
And the story follows: X comes to me after 5 days with a new symptom which I'm concentrating on. But then he also tells me, "doctor what about the oral medication you had told that you'll be starting?" Or I notice his previous record in which I've documented my plan.
Didn't that help me and the patient in turn in the efficient management of his condition?
I've heard people gobbling pills for unnecessarily longer duration. For instance my mother herself was taking tablets for carpel tunnel syndrome for longer than the requirement which we realised only after our visit to the doctor after a long time.

So before I become a doctor, and forget what I'd once decided to do, I wanted to make this promise. To deliver 100% quality service, I'll make sure I spend that extra minute in documenting and explaining to the patients what they need to know so it makes their life and our job easier!
I promise.
       

PK, a Threat to Me

I HATE updating myself.
And someone helping others think and change themselves for their betterment, and for the good of the society is the last thing I would support.
This is what I am, and I can prove it to you.
First, let me tell you more about me.
I basically know how the world works. So, its pretty easy to exploit people.
I love to watch movies which have "masala", with absolutely nil brain stimulation and which maintains my state. 
But once in a while I do enjoy the ones which are trying to change people for good. Which make people rethink and question themselves/their beliefs. Oh! Don't fall into the false notion that I watch them to change MY thoughts. I watch them so I can help people NOT change/ rethink.      

For instance, recently there was a big threat to all religions by a movie called "PK". The movie questioned the beliefs of ALL religions. Just QUESTIONED not CRITICIZED (yes, Hindu practices were portrayed more, but no religion was spared).
The protagonist who was an alien in the movie learnt that a Godman was what he called a "wrong number". He realised people were getting blindly fooled, betrayed, looted. Religion is a form to reach God. But he clearly stated that God doesn't need a body guard, there is no need to kill people to protect religion and God. And he asked the audience to choose to believe in God Himself but not the one made by people.
Audience were made to rethink. Rethink about their beliefs, practices, godmen.
I sensed a threat in all this. Because this meant, some people would CHANGE. Godmen would be questioned. People would open their minds, would stop getting fooled. And you know how I HATE change.
I had to stop this. So I watched the movie enough times to create strategies. I must have mentioned that I know how the world works.      
And so, I know how religion works too. So my task was pretty easy.
I belong to NO religion. By "no religion", I don't mean "not a believer". I do respect all religions. But I used this as a weapon to stop the movie from making changes to the weapons themselves.
I planted in the minds of the people and various religious associations the false belief that the movie is criticizing their respective religions. And that the movie must be banned. The theaters running the movie must be attacked. I was almost successful in the beginning. I could convince all religions that their practices were condemned.
But I don't know where I went wrong. The theaters are still running house full. People supporting the movie are more than those criticizing it. Maybe people are getting smart. I can't fool many unlike before. They are liking change. I might have to eventually die disappointed.
~ Status Quo
#WeSupportPK 

small things, BIG meanings

A small incident happened yesterday.
It was the 10th morning since I started my ICMR study, in the Endocrinology Department, Govt. Hospital.
A lady quite old, who satisfied the criteria of having Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus for more than 5 years agreed to participate only because I would get the blood test that the doctor recommended done for her. She had a big thyroid swelling which was apparently not operated due to high BP and sugar levels. She'd come just to get her Anti-diabetic drugs refilled. After doing some simple tests to detect whether she had peripheral neuropathy(that's the main objective of the study), her blood sample was drawn and she was informed that I would collect the report for her and that she could get her fundoscopy done by then.

 Afternoon unfortunately she had to give another sample of blood since the previous one for some reason got hemolysed. Both she and her husband were going around the hospital the entire day with the fear of not getting tablets. But I managed to calm her down and took her to the doctor again explaining about the delay in the report. She was prescribed the necessary drugs. When I looked at her, she gave a pleading sign asking me to tell him about her swelling. When told, she was asked to see the surgery dept. By the time she visited the dept. which asked her to get a scanning done next week, I could get her RBS report which she showed the Endocrinologist. The old couple were very happy that they finally got her tablets and thanked me. Then something unusual happened. The lady waved at me and asked me to come out. She then began taking out money to offer me! I was like "No"! She kept insisting, I ran back into the dept and waved at her. They left happily. She would hardly have money for anything other than for her daily bread and yet she was insisting on me to take money without having asked for it!
That just showed how much that little care meant to her which reflected the hard fact of how little attention she had received before. I was happy that I could be of some help to them in guiding. But it was not too long that it made me realise she was just one of the whole lot of people out there who needed help. Who didn't know what to do. Who have the least awareness about illness. To whom the health facilities struggle to reach. Ofcourse there's nothing that the doctors can do as they are already working the entire day trying to help all those standing in the BIG queue at the OPD.
Then the question is how is the problem of lack of awareness, lack of health facilities just because of lack of MONEY going to be solved? Is education the only answer?
There are a lot of organisations, public health workers working for such people because prevention is better than cure which leads us to "awareness, a necessity for prevention". Just imagine an old man is aware about Diabetes and its complication and is tested frequently so that he could start medication early and have a quality life. But most people of this socio-economic status come to know that they have Diabetes when they get admitted due to a big wound on their foot which might be as worse that it needs amputation.
 I believe this awareness programs are not just the reponsibility of the people working in NGOs or in public health Dept, but should be taken up by Medical Students as well. There are about 40,525 medical students in India(according to Wiki :P). What if each one gets indulged in such activities as their curriculum, as their responsibility? Every person knows smoking is injurious to health but do they know how to quit it? We all know its not easy! So instead of just putting boards around our colleges and hospitals that once who smoke will be fined, why cant we conduct programs on how to quit smoking? A camp to test glucose levels of old people in a village? I'm sure this ideal plan too cant reach the massive population but don't you think it could make a huge difference??