DailyPost 279
DOCTORS’ DAY
The National Doctors’ Day is celebrated to express our gratitude to the contributions of the Doctors to individual lives & in the process the health of the community. They are the healers. They are the Gods on earth taking care of our pain & suffering & consequently life. The health of the nation & the world is in their hands. This noble profession has made transformational difference to our existence from freeing the country of Polio to bringing down infant mortality to enhancing the our life span.
Trust in at the core of the doctor patient relationship and we have all grown up with full & complete faith in our doctors. The relationship more often than not was personal. A family Doctor is not a reality of too distant past. Doctors visiting patients houses was also a prevalent practice. And the patient generally went to different grades of hospitals depending on the complexity of the treatment required.
Hippocrates oath is the baptism of every doctor & medical ethics a way of life. They were kept on the pedestal, which they duly deserved. The quality of services improved with corporate super speciality hospitals / use of advanced technology, much better qualified & skilled doctors, paramedics, drug research & its products. The whole medical ecosystem went to a different level.
The commensurate increase in the trust, faith & the practice of medical ethics did not happen, in reality, it happened the other way round. Commercialisation became the order of the day. Pharmaceutical & medical engineering companies started calling the shots. Hospital was another investment. The costs hit the sky & further adjustment to the costs lead to larger number of unwarranted practises, which the patient & his relatives have to battle with.
Doctors’ Day can also be a day of reflection to understand as to where & how things went wrong. Change is the need of hour.
THE COUNTRY NEEDS A HEALTHCARE WHERE CARE IS BY DEFAULT.
Sanjay Sahay