I am Asish and I am a medical student. Being a medical student sometimes I wonder, “Did I make the right decision to be a doctor?.” The answer is not always satisfactory.
I know people who refrain from wearing a mask and doing sanitization, due to unacceptable reasons and then I see doctors who wear tedious PPE kits for 7-8 hours a day because of social, personal, medical, and legal issues.
In a recent viral video, I saw a politician misbehaving with a doctor. To be very honest, it was not shocking to me at all. I have seen the citizens of this country insulting and outraging a doctor. I have seen heroes in these TV serials hold doctors by their collar.
People who respond in this manner are emotional and heartbroken, I understand. But people do not realize that we should focus on increasing our medical and health facilities. They further do not realize that health and medicine were not among their priorities in the previous elections. And patients then discharge all their disappointments and misery to the doctor in the form of violence and assault.
If a young kid from class 10th watches the same viral video, he might wonder, “why would I bother to become a doctor, I am going to be misbehaved and assaulted by people. Why would I bother to go through those endless books, tight schedules, and many typical sleepless nights for the next numerous years of my life and end up being disrespected and assaulted without doing anything wrong?”
Despite the deep pain in our hearts, we have to realize that COVID-19 is a warlike situation that has never happened before and the soldiers of this war are certainly the doctors.
You must have heard of the news in the national capital where a doctor failed to arrange a bed for himself in his residential hospital. What do you think of the impact such news has on the other doctors who are risking their and their family’s life daily to treat those seemingly endless patients in the hospital?
What do you think of the moral and emotional impact a doctor has while watching their neighbouring hospital relinquish services in the hospital due to the absence of oxygen supply after writing bundles of unanswered letters to the central and state government and then filing a case in the judicial court to sustain their oxygen supply?
Do we ever think about the impact on doctors while glancing at the withdrawal of their insurance policy after an assertive promise made by the government earlier?