Death of the compassionate doctor

Today I read the unfortunate case where Noida’s Fortis hospital handed over the wrong dead body of a person to his mourning family. The deceased was being treated at the hospital and the family was kept in the dark of his real condition. The case did not surprise me.

It really is sad to see how immune have we become to the negligence and casualness of our medical system, callous doctors and shoddy hospitals.  And I can’t help but miss the good old family doctor.  

Do you remember your family doctor (if you are lucky, you may still have one)? These family doctors were usually ‘General Physicians’ and we went to them as soon as we had a fever or something more complicated. And it so happened that these family doctors were so close to the family that they were invited to almost all of the family’s important events . These docs knew and remembered what we did, our family history, our allergies, our faulty genes and what we could do build our immune (at times a short visit turned to an interesting lecture and of course free advice from them).  

But today, what happens? We have the specialists. We wait for days to get an appointment from these specialists and then on the day of the appointment wait for hours just to meet these specialists in five stars like hospitals (not to forget the super expensive cafeteria at the plush hospitals offering world cuisines).  And if we are sick enough not to wait then of course we pay more to skip the wait. So this specialist greets us mechanically (we just know that artificial smile) and is quick enough to pull out their letter head to start scribbling the symptoms and drugs. If we happen to deviate and get somewhat chatty, they are quick enough to bring us back to our ailment, related facts and give us the same impatient look as you get from people waiting in the queue of an ATM when you are taking too long. I can feel them just so detached with anything to do with us. Most of the times, this specialist recommends a range of tests and will ask us to return with the test results. And when we are back (again after that same drill of appointment and waiting), most of the times and somehow invariably we are told to have many more problems than the one we walked inside with. 

Why do we mistrust today's specialists so much? Why do we increasingly feel their lack of empathy and more of greed? Why do these specialists appear more of salesmen than caretakers? And how can we handover ourselves to these indifferent specialists and hope that they will genuinely treat us of the underlying problem and not use us as a money making proposition? 

Our metro cities are increasingly attracting medical tourists from abroad and boast of the most advanced medical facilities and skillful specialists who have studied abroad and have many awards to their credit. And yes things at a superficial level have really improved. But if you lift that superficiality, what we clearly lack are the compassionate, patient and genuine doctors.