What is Medical Hakikat? Part - 3

Please Note: This article is intended only for Doctors and medical undergraduate and post-graduate students. Non-Medicos please do not read this article.

I may not agree with your views, but yet I will defend your right to say it — Voltaire

Please read the part one & part two of the blog post before reading this: https://agnipathdoctors.blogspot.com/2019/06/what-is-medical-hakikat.html

https://agnipathdoctors.blogspot.com/2019/07/what-is-medical-hakikat-part-2.html 

Media (mis-) management

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? —Bertrand Russell.

As the difference in income between the super poor and the super rich in the country is increasing day by day, the same way the popularity of some doctors is rising astronomically and that of doctors, in general, is falling abysmally.

Some doctors are being eulogized in the most sugary, grandiloquent language in newspaper special advertisement section (Vigyapan Parishisht). They are being honored by the media. Doctors in Kota are spending more than a million rupees (> Rs. 10,00,000) every month in activities promoting self and their hospital’s name. They are giving free services in camps being organized by the media or politicians. They are even sponsoring media events and fairs. But how much time and money they are devoting in promoting doctors image in general? Remember we share in collective infamy as in praise.

           

There is a strong feeling that some members of our own community are filling media ear against doctors. If not, then how reporters are able to get confidential details and information?

We need to establish a Media and Public Relation (MPR) cell to tackle the problem. Ask doctors to pay say around 10% on the amount they are spending on promotional activities as ‘medical PR fund tax’. After all,

God is on everyone's side... And, in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies — Jean Anouilh.

Use this ‘tax’ money and donation to actively promote the doctor community, their problems, their viewpoints, etc. Office bearers of various medical organizations should issue positive statements in media from time to time.

Valedictory functions should be organized regularly for achievers from the medical community, however small.

Doctors have relatives and friends working in the media. Doctors having access to media should devote some time in promoting the medical profession in general. They should use their influence to counteract any false allegations, half-truth, appearing in media.

Strong action should be taken against defamatory comments including going to court. Highlight to the public our problems and educate and convince public leaders. This can be done when the public is cool and not being provoked by spicy media reporting.

Pressure tactics

No one ever would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm — C. F. Kettering.

After an attack, if the doctors go on protest, then pressure is put through various ways to end the agitation. Doctors working in the government sector are most amenable to pressure. Government doctors are threatened or even jailed under the Essential Services Maintenance Act, threatened with service period break and transfers, etc. Junior Residents are asked to vacate the hostels, their teachers (faculty members) are asked to pressurize the Junior Residents working under them to come back to work.

Higher the post greater is the susceptibility to pressure from the government – Dr. Neeraj Dewanda’s Law of Medical Agitation.

In the past doctors working in the private sector had the freedom and were the pioneer in fighting for the doctor’s rights. But now with a multitude of laws, at the last count > 60 different legal requirements have to be satisfied for private practice and running a nursing home, private practitioners have also become the target for pressure tactics. The largest threat is that of pollution check, with no proper facility for medical waste disposal in many cities.

Once after a serious incident of violence against doctors in a city of Rajasthan, all the government doctors went on strike. When the matter was not resolved then after two days the private sectors doctors also went on strike and closed all the private clinics and hospital in the city. When even the Chief Minister’s relative could not get treatment in the city, the entire administration got in ‘Surgical Strike mode’.

Immediately inspections were carried out by the pollution department even in the night and cases were filed against many hospitals. Notices were posted on the various hospitals for their alleged violation of various laws and building code. Within hours bulldozers were outside many large private hospitals to raze them to ground for alleged violation of these buildings norm. Hastily a meeting was called by the private doctors association and the strike was called off.

Patients also as part of pressure tactics file counter case of medical negligence.

Withdrawing our agitation in mid-stream leave us floundering for air and drowns all. Before an agitation is launched there should be clear aims and objectives to be achieved and it should be withdrawn only on the attainment of these targets. Remember,

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate — John F. Kennedy.

Summary

There is no easy path to walk in this troubled time, after all,

Alternative, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees —Saul Bellow.

We have to balance between forming good relations with the public and taking strong action against any injustice;

Don’t be too sweet, you won’t be eaten; don’t be too sour, you won’t be spat out — German proverb.

All of us have to come forward to serve the medical fraternity with ‘Tan, Maan and Dhan’ (Body, Mind and Wealth). We have to develop a collective determined will as;

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will — Mahatma Gandhi.

And, There are only two powers in the world – the spirit and the sword; and in the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit — Napoleon Bonaparte.

Because we don’t think about the future generations, they will never forget us — Henrik Tikkanen.

Doctors are spending lakhs of rupees on giving their children medical education, but how much they are spending to create the right environment for their children to practice in the future. If immediate efforts are not made now then perhaps (God forbid) the high edifice of medical practice they are building by relentless labor for their children to inherit may reduce to rubble by an errant mob and the children they are raising to be future doctors may be attacked by goons. Remember,

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar  —Hellen Keller.

Remember anything which is born must die, but die not a thousand deaths before your destiny calls you — Atharvaveda

(Based on allegedly true incidents)

— ND
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DISCLAIMER: This article is intended only for fun purpose. The author does not promote or recommend any behavior illustrated here or claim it to be useful. Use of the information herein is at you one's own risk. Before trying to emulate or follow anything the reader is well advised to take into account ethical, moral, legal and other considerations. The author recommends that Medical Practice should be of the highest ethical and moral level keeping in mind the interest of the patient as foremost. 

DISCLAIMER: This article is intended only for fun purpose. The author does not promote or recommend any behavior illustrated here or claim it to be useful. Use of the information herein is at you one's own risk. Before trying to emulate or follow anything the reader is well advised to take into account ethical, moral, legal and other considerations. The author recommends that Medical Education should be of the highest ethical and moral level keeping in mind the interest of the patient as foremost and according to MCI and other Board’s norm.