Diary of a Doctor

Hospitals are bad places. There’s the stench of death, the all pervasive odour of antiseptics and disinfectants, cries of pain and suffering, whimpers of terror as health professionals including doctor in white, sterile coats ferry sick souls from one place to another. On a still night, one might hear the last sigh of an old, defeated soul.

Hospitals are good places. It is here that one hears the first, lusty, welcome cry of a newborn and it is here that one is cured of one’s ailments and reunited with their loved ones. You will hear the laughter of relief bubbling forth from reassured souls.

Patients are wheeled in and out of wards, the emergency department, in and out of operation theaters, in and out of every possible investigative department in the hospital, endlessly. The creaking of the old gurneys as they roll down corridors, carrying sick patients, is one of the sounds that make up the cacophony in a hospital.

The hush and urgent, low voices of the ICU, the normal chatter in the general wards, the beeping of monitors in the OTs and the ICUs, the tinkling of instruments in the operating rooms, the low hum of scores of human voices in the out patient department and the utter chaos in the cafeteria…they are the life and soul of a thriving hospital!

Everyday the game of life and death is played here, on repeat, time after time, without any glitch, without fail.

How strange that both hope and despair spring from this one place!

When a hospital happens to be your workplace, then by default you tend to become immune to certain scenarios, certain occurences…call it a defense mechanism or by any other name, but the fact remains that when you are right in the middle of a sea of suffering humanity, you learn to swim.

It does not help anyone’s cause if the health professional is so soft hearted that he/she loses objectivity and every patient crashing sends him/her crashing as well! Emotions are not to cloud a clinician’s judgement.

The call of duty in this profession is such that everyone involved has to learn to look beyond the obvious, not just in terms of clinical detection, but also the emotional aspect..and focus on the job at hand.

And yet, empathy is one of the cornerstones of treating any illness. A doctor should be able to hold a patient’s hand throughout, no matter how rocky the roads are. He or she must never desert a patient simply because the diagnosis or treatment is beyond his or her purview. It is the sacred duty of the treating professional to care for the patient till handing him/ her over into more capable hands.

One of the most inexplicable things that l have noticed as a health professional myself is how the outcome of a patient’s condition seems to depend on the level of faith that their parents/guardians repose in us. In our practice, we all too frequently come across extremely moribund patients who have been labelled ‘beyond salvage’ and yet, have made it ‘miraculously’. A closer look has revealed  that in such cases the responsible guardians had had great faith in the treating unit and had expressed solidarity with their actions at every step, almost never questioning their intent or purpose. And conversely, there are patients with relatively less life threatening presentations who have had poorer outcomes much to our regret and what has stood out about these patients was the consistent lack of trust and respect for the treating unit. Now the debate about who is actually at fault for the latter can go on ad nauseam without any conclusion, but it is indeed true that good, positive, trusting vibes between the healer and the sufferer have given good outcomes in most cases.

We have often lost a patient inspite of every effort made, and yet have had the attendants graciously offer us their gratitude….. for having done everything within our means, our knowledge, for having held their hands throughout…this profession never ceases to amaze me.

To the outside world, the hospital is just another workplace with some salient features but to us who work in a hospital, it is the source of our livelihood, no doubts there, but it is also our temple, our battlefield, our home where the work ethics have no parallel elsewhere, where we recognise only human life, where we worship knowledge and skill, where we fight battles to the finish, and only then rest, hoping we have made a meaningful difference in some lives!