The mighty doctors

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.