"The Good Doctor"

Imagine walking up to Aladdin’s lamp and asking the genie to fill the world with “good doctors”. What makes a good doctor? This seems to be pertinent at this point what with the brickbats that the medical fraternity has been facing of late. Those criticising doctors seem to be eternally jaundiced in their opinion without an inkling of an idea that being a doctor is an awesome responsibility and means much more than dispensing pills or patching up torn flesh.

To be a doctor is actually to be a tailor, but here he mends the shattered minds that are consequent to ill health and lack of well-being. Doctors from time immemorial have been construed as the intermediary between man and God. But does that mean he has the powers of immortality? Hell no. Little do the critics realise that even these intermediaries have their limitations despite all the detailing, all the drudgery that arises out of the conflict between the flights of intuitions and the diagnostic procedures and norms on the operation tables.

How much can you know? Can you know it all? Yes, a doctor needs to know much more than any other professional because by treating humankind he walks on a tightrope. He has to make the best diagnosis because in many cases of self-limited or incurable disorders the precise and timely diagnosis does NOT make a great difference in many patients. So, how far would you be to decapitate him for his alleged “negligence”? Medical science is still ignorant in several aspects, hence it is not always about a “gentle doctor”, it is about one who discovers new facts, new treatment. Because information is a small fraction that requires being injected into the enormous puzzle which is the biomedical research

n the yesteryear, doctors were soothsayers, astrologers, historians, philosophers and so on. People imposed a lot of faith and trust in them and pinned their hopes on more of magic and less on science. As humans we have limitations but these boundaries don’t stunt us because we are made for saving lives. What is expected out of doctors in the present day could turn you aghast - a good doctor has to simultaneously , honest, kind, humble, enthusiastic, optimistic, and efficient.

He is required to be a specialist in a host of scientific disciplines—anatomy, pharmacology, molecular biology, computer science, epidemiology, nutrition and diet, psychology and at the same time be an insurance specialist, anthropologist, ethicist, marriage counsellor, social worker and economist. The expectations can be totally staggering. Strangely the one-sided articles in the news media seem to research and pick only the deficiencies so as to arrive at a conclusion that the doctors know little.

Doctors reel under the breadth of expertise they are supposed to master. The expectations have soared so much that people have begun to look up at them to heal their social and physical failings. But what is little considered is that both the doctors do not live in a world of spectacular facilities that match the in the emerging medical issues. And in an emergency department, exhaustion and nervousness an upper hand as against wisdom and calmness, especially with an anxious mind wary of the result, that could even end up in violence by those associated with the patients or destruction of hospital property. 

Doctors well understand that an empowered individual turns into a patient number when he steps into a hospital and thus deems it their responsibility to take a call on the choice of treatment after a thorough explanation on why the procedure is being recommended. It is not always that a doctor recommends tests and diagnostic procedures for mere commercials. There are several doctors who work out of sheer compassion for the fellow being, squeezed out by the pressure of work, of financial anxiety, wife and children to care for, of nights broken by the need for clinical attention of patients, ignoring the cries of their own to cater to the needs of the others.

A good doctor will be different things to different people at different times, so never generalise and throw muck.