Of
late I have come across a number of articles on the internet that portray
doctors as holy creatures, geniuses, who study hard, work even harder and
selflessly; their only goal being helping the humanity without ever caring
about money, health or social lives. Such articles usually receive a chorus of
approval in the form of facebook 'likes' and sugary comments from fellow
doctors. Being a doctors myself, who has now completed almost 10 years in the
field of medicine, going through the usual cycle of being an undergraduate
student to being a junior resident and as senior resident supervising the work
of juniors I can safely say that I have
seen it all and I find most of these sugar coated articles not just untrue but
also a dangerous trend that undermines the ability of doctors to be able to
critically look at themselves. There are a few myths about doctors that needs
to be busted:
Myth 1: All the students who get
into medicine are exceptionally intelligent - I think most
of the people in the medical profession already know this, but this myth
continues to be propagated amongst the general population. Well, here is the
news for you guys - most of the people
in the medical profession have average or slightly above average IQ and some are frankly dumb (of course there are
exceptions), and the reason they got into medicine is not because they are
exceptionally smart but because they have been perseverant and/or they have
exploited a flaw in our educational system that allows itself to be manipulated
by a nexus of specialized coaching institutes or reservations on one basis or
another (I am not even talking about the NRI/management quotas).
Myth 2: All medical students have
to study really hard to pass their exams – Medical students
will proudly flaunt their 3000 pages books telling you that this is what they
have to study to pass their exams. Another lie. The fact is they are very few
students who read their books in its entirety and even if they do; it is for
their own knowledge. The fact is, to pass the exams all one has to do is to go
through the ‘important’ topics which hardly constitute more than one third of
all topics. If you find these hefty books by foreign authors too much to go
through, in that case there are smaller, more lucid exam targeted books from
Indian authors (which essentially are a compilation of ripped off chapters from
different books by more established authors).
Myth 3: Doctors are paid less than
their counterparts in other fields – While it is true that
doctors on an average start earning a couple of years later than most of their
friends in other fields, most of them ending up making a lot more than them
after a few years. The salaries of a freshly passed out postgraduate doctor is
significantly higher than postgraduates from any other field and average salaries
of senior doctors are comparable to that of other professions.
Myth 4: Doctors work selflessly
with only the well being of patients in mind - Certainly
there are doctors who keep the well being of patients as their top priority but
they definitely do not constitute a majority. Instances of doctors not turning
up for distress calls, sending patients away to other hospitals, not taking
adequate sterile precautions etc. are way too common in most hospitals.
So
the doctors are flawed creatures, well who is not? Doctors are humans too after
all! But somewhere down the line we started taking ourselves too seriously;
living in a state of misplaced self importance, not willing to accept any kind
of flaws in ourselves. This is a dangerous trend. We must not forget two very
important things – we deal with the most precious thing on the planet, the
human life, and doctors are human beings prone to make mistakes just like
everyone else. These two things make it extremely important that doctors are
willing to accept criticism, not only from others but themselves as well, and
this is only possible when we stop living in the rosy world that some of us
have created for ourselves in which doctors are magical healers, devoid of any
shortcomings.
