Another Night in the Life of a Doctor
When you have one child to feed, you would not only feed him, but you would also tell him stories, give him hugs and kisses and tell him that he is the most precious thing you have got under the endless sky.
When you have two children to feed at the same time, you would feed them alright, and the stories would perhaps also be there, but the hugs and kisses would dwindle, although you don’t love them a least less than all the treasures in the heavens and the earth — it’s just too difficult to be feeding and hugging and kissing two babies at the same time.
When you have five children to feed at a time, feeding them is not only the only thing you can afford to do, you would further have to ensure that none of them can have their own way with you or the food, so that you can give each of them an equitable share. It’s just because this is how the human brain works! The very site of a single plate of food with five mouths to feed from it makes each of them want to exact their share of it before the food runs out.
With one child, you tell him stories while you mix the food on the plate and make the bolus in your hand, and you hug him and kiss him while he chews the food and swallows it.
With two, you can only afford to continue with your story because by the time you’ve the food into one mouth, the other is already empty for you to fill, leaving no extra time for hugs and kisses.
With five of them, you have on an average three mouths opened at you at a time, ready to cry out of hunger or in protest of “neglect” if you fail to fill it for more than a few fractions of a second. The stories have to be replaced by a stern voice reminding the children of their father whom they fear, or of ghosts or anything that would buy you a few more milliseconds. Discipline starts getting priority over the ocean of love and affection that you have in your heart for each of them, only to make sure that you can deliver that love, and its material form, your hard-earned substance, the food, in an equitable manner.
The scenario of our health system is more akin to the mother with five children. With a doctor : patient ratio that violates all kinds of standards and requirements, and a nurse : patient ratio that is even more so, we are entangled in an endless battle to strike the balance between providing care that is needed and care that is desired.
Last night, I was kept awake throughout the whole of it by a single patient, who kept on sending his mother to my room every half an hour because of problems that, though perhaps very worrying to them, were actually silly and childish to say the least.
10 out of 10, 100 out of 100 people reading this would say that no matter how silly and childish the complaints of the patient might have been, I should not have ignored them, because patients are not acquainted with these matters and because it is natural for them to be worried very easily. They would say that I should have left my room every time I was called, and should have gone to the patient’s bedside, listened to all of his complaints attentively, disregarding the silly nature of them, and I should have discussed the matter with and should have taken all the time to explain to him, with kindness and compassion, that his “a twitch here” and “a little jolt there” and “a feeling of flare down there” were not matters to be worried about.
But I am like the mother with five mouths to feed. If I let the smart, intelligent, or selfish ones occupy me too much, it only means deprivation for the shy and the timid, who are too hesitant to interrupt a doctor busy with another patient. So, after having responded to these silly half-an-hour-interval calls upto 3 AM, I had to start thinking about the patients I would have to attend during the day that was coming up, some of them needing immediate surgery, others needing constant attention and care towards safety, and I had to throw out of my mind what 10 out 10, 100 out of 100 people would want me to do.
At 6:30 AM, I was awakened by a knock on the door, and there stood the mother of this patient, “Doctor, he’s asked that you come and see him — he says he’s still feeling the same.”
Hiding my irritation, and half-suppressing a very tired yawn, I nonetheless asked, “Does he have any other complaints than those he had last night?”
“No.”
An angry mind inside me shouted, “How many times, and in how many different ways and flavours do I have to tell him that his twitches, jolts and flares are all rubbish? When will he feel assured?”
Suppressing that kind of an angry outburst, I told the lady, “He’s continuously feeling that way because he is indeed very sick, and his sickness at this age makes him very worried, too. But you’d have to learn to assure him and give him courage. Instead of that, if you keep on coming here every time he complains and keep on taking every doctor to his bedside to listen to his silly complains, you would end up like the boy crying out tiger! tiger! You’d not have a doctor eager to respond to your call when the tiger really comes. So go back to your bed and set him to rest.”
Or should I have gone with this lady and spent another 20 minutes with them, risking the care of patients who were still to come, only to satisfy the fancies of a patient who was already on the way towards safety? What would have been the proper thing to do?
Although I have used the example of a mother with five babies to illustrate demand and supply, let no one think that I endorse the idea that families and society can be happy just by having less children.
When you have one child to feed, you would not only feed him, but you would also tell him stories, give him hugs and kisses and tell him that he is the most precious thing you have got under the endless sky.
When you have two children to feed at the same time, you would feed them alright, and the stories would perhaps also be there, but the hugs and kisses would dwindle, although you don’t love them a least less than all the treasures in the heavens and the earth — it’s just too difficult to be feeding and hugging and kissing two babies at the same time.
When you have five children to feed at a time, feeding them is not only the only thing you can afford to do, you would further have to ensure that none of them can have their own way with you or the food, so that you can give each of them an equitable share. It’s just because this is how the human brain works! The very site of a single plate of food with five mouths to feed from it makes each of them want to exact their share of it before the food runs out.
With one child, you tell him stories while you mix the food on the plate and make the bolus in your hand, and you hug him and kiss him while he chews the food and swallows it.
With two, you can only afford to continue with your story because by the time you’ve the food into one mouth, the other is already empty for you to fill, leaving no extra time for hugs and kisses.
With five of them, you have on an average three mouths opened at you at a time, ready to cry out of hunger or in protest of “neglect” if you fail to fill it for more than a few fractions of a second. The stories have to be replaced by a stern voice reminding the children of their father whom they fear, or of ghosts or anything that would buy you a few more milliseconds. Discipline starts getting priority over the ocean of love and affection that you have in your heart for each of them, only to make sure that you can deliver that love, and its material form, your hard-earned substance, the food, in an equitable manner.
The scenario of our health system is more akin to the mother with five children. With a doctor : patient ratio that violates all kinds of standards and requirements, and a nurse : patient ratio that is even more so, we are entangled in an endless battle to strike the balance between providing care that is needed and care that is desired.
Last night, I was kept awake throughout the whole of it by a single patient, who kept on sending his mother to my room every half an hour because of problems that, though perhaps very worrying to them, were actually silly and childish to say the least.
10 out of 10, 100 out of 100 people reading this would say that no matter how silly and childish the complaints of the patient might have been, I should not have ignored them, because patients are not acquainted with these matters and because it is natural for them to be worried very easily. They would say that I should have left my room every time I was called, and should have gone to the patient’s bedside, listened to all of his complaints attentively, disregarding the silly nature of them, and I should have discussed the matter with and should have taken all the time to explain to him, with kindness and compassion, that his “a twitch here” and “a little jolt there” and “a feeling of flare down there” were not matters to be worried about.
But I am like the mother with five mouths to feed. If I let the smart, intelligent, or selfish ones occupy me too much, it only means deprivation for the shy and the timid, who are too hesitant to interrupt a doctor busy with another patient. So, after having responded to these silly half-an-hour-interval calls upto 3 AM, I had to start thinking about the patients I would have to attend during the day that was coming up, some of them needing immediate surgery, others needing constant attention and care towards safety, and I had to throw out of my mind what 10 out 10, 100 out of 100 people would want me to do.
At 6:30 AM, I was awakened by a knock on the door, and there stood the mother of this patient, “Doctor, he’s asked that you come and see him — he says he’s still feeling the same.”
Hiding my irritation, and half-suppressing a very tired yawn, I nonetheless asked, “Does he have any other complaints than those he had last night?”
“No.”
An angry mind inside me shouted, “How many times, and in how many different ways and flavours do I have to tell him that his twitches, jolts and flares are all rubbish? When will he feel assured?”
Suppressing that kind of an angry outburst, I told the lady, “He’s continuously feeling that way because he is indeed very sick, and his sickness at this age makes him very worried, too. But you’d have to learn to assure him and give him courage. Instead of that, if you keep on coming here every time he complains and keep on taking every doctor to his bedside to listen to his silly complains, you would end up like the boy crying out tiger! tiger! You’d not have a doctor eager to respond to your call when the tiger really comes. So go back to your bed and set him to rest.”
Or should I have gone with this lady and spent another 20 minutes with them, risking the care of patients who were still to come, only to satisfy the fancies of a patient who was already on the way towards safety? What would have been the proper thing to do?
Although I have used the example of a mother with five babies to illustrate demand and supply, let no one think that I endorse the idea that families and society can be happy just by having less children.
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