Doctors: Are they not for ill people anyways?

KATHMANDU, April 20: This is the conglomeration of my first-hand experiences while taking someone to get medical services at various hospitals in Kathmandu, while being a patient myself.



I have had a lot to say about the condescension, arrogance, and insensitiveness of health personnel, especially doctors, toward their naïve and submissive patience.[break]



Recently, I took my cousin to see an eminent gastrologist in town. The adventure of seeing the doctor was far from easy. Having wised up to the unpleasant fact that people should be at the hospital as early as possible to fall within the seven patients’ quota every Sunday and Thursday, we thought of ourselves as the early birds to catch the worm.



But after we got to the hospital at 10pm for the registration next day at 7am our hearts groaned inwardly when we discovered a bunch of people waiting for the same purpose.



Without mincing words, the receptionist informed us that we should hang around outside the main gate of the hospital all night, yet there was no guarantee of getting an appointment with the doctor, and we would have to come back again next Thursday or Sunday, just like today.



The whole thing was ridiculous beyond words.



My concern here is that, they should have installed a system to make the entire process of registration simpler or systematic, instead of putting people through the unproductive purgatory.



Moreover, isn’t it the doctor’s arrogance that he won’t treat more than seven patients despite being a fulltime doctor there? What is a doctor for then if not for treating ill people? What’s with this seven patients a day and two days a week concept? Why can’t he treat few more patients each weekday? Needless to say, no public figure in any walk of life should dare to underestimate the power of the public, who once ascended them to eminence by appreciating their work.



The same eminent public figure (read the doctor) can be brought down, due to his/her stupidity and arrogance.



Few years ago, when I had taken my father to see his psychiatric doctor at a well-established private hospital in Kathmandu, the so-called eminent doctor behaved unceremoniously by literally throwing the medical report-file at my father and snapped at us saying he would not treat us anymore, which really took the wind out of our sails.



Our “fault” being that in order to get the medical tests done, I took my father to a different hospital rather than the one recommended by him. But we had gotten precisely the same test done and he did not dare tell us that we had gotten the wrong thing done either.



Even if a patient does make mistakes, a doctor, more so a psychiatric one, is not supposed to behave that way. But he did!



In addition to the above, I am under the impression that doctors are too vain to inform patients or their attendants about possible causes of the disease that they have and ways to prevent it. I once was diagnosed with hernia and had a minor surgery to fix it.



During various follow up visits I asked doctors what could have caused it and lessons one could learn from it. But doctors would not address my relevant queries. Obviously, they were up to every weasel word every time I asked them politely.



Now, I have acquired the necessary basic knowledge about hernia and possible causative factors for it from the internet due to my own passion for learning things out of general interests.



But in my opinion, a doctor is supposed to enlighten patients about the ailment that they have been thru so that it would serve as a lesson for them and family members in the future. I think doctors must not forget the Hippocratic Oath; they take before getting into this sacred and sensitive profession.



Ganesh Poudel is a teacher in Kathmandu.

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