A Military Doctor, A Contradiction?

Doctor (டாக்டர், Tamil; 2021)
Story, Direction: Nelson Dilipkumar

At one look, it may look like a poorly made comedy with the protagonist appearing all sullen and grim, with a perpetual frown throughout the movie as if he holds all the world's problems upon his shoulders. And it is supposed to be a comedy of all things. On the other hand, the plot is about the hero rescuing his love interest's niece from abductors involved in an international child abduction racket! Quite a perplexing one is this dark comedy. It is, however, not short of one-liner punchlines. It conveys the message that we are all self-centred hedonists who are only interested in self-gratification and personal interest and see not beyond our immediate family members. Rules and regulations only apply to others. We are quick to close an eye and bend the rules when we are in the spotlight.

The movie starts with Dr Varun (Sivakarthigeyan), a military surgeon, deciding whether to operate on an Indian Army afflicted with near-fatal injury with dismal prognosis and a captured terrorist with a better outcome. Dr Varun chooses the latter. His rationale is that information from the terrorist would help to defeat the enemy. That is Dr Varun, the pragmatist who calls a spade a spade.

His very thing upsets his fiancée and calls off the whole wedding plan. She accuses him of being unromantic and unsympathetic. Dr Varun takes all this stoically. It is about that time that the finacée's niece is found missing, and the whole family goes into a tailspin. The police seem to be dragging their feet. The telephone tapping technologist that the police sent to their home is more interested in throwing his weight around than actually finding something. The local ruffians that the police rounded up appear clueless about the missing girl.

This is where our military doctor moves in, not as a knight in shining armour, swashbuckling style, but as a maverick strategist utilising his resources to recruit the local hoodlums, including the comical Yogi Babu, to mastermind the girl's return and dismantle an international network of child kidnappers.

Forget logic, indulge in the comedy and take in the message. 

Some professions need their practitioners to perform without fear or favour. They need to be fair, unwavered by emotions, but full of compassion. The controversies surrounding vaccine passport and accusation of the unvaccinated piggy-bagging on the herd immunity conferred by the vaccinated population makes us question whether this is fair. Knowing very well nothing is absolute in science, can the medical practitioners stay idle when the politicians and the Big Pharma go on churning out statistics to meet their agenda?.

An exciting combo - military doctor. An army person is just supposed to follow orders, not ask questions. A doctor is supposed to question, not take things at face value and hearsay. A doctor is supposed to investigate and make a decision. Conversely, the military does not need smart alecs; they want unquestioning loyal followers who hold the silence till the end. A military doctor, a contradiction?

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The robe and the abacus...

Never trust a man in a suit and tie.

He may hide his evil intentions behind

his haberdashery perfection. In the

same vein, a female who reveals much

more than is needed to hide the 

necessaries may be masking the real 

thing she is hiding. 

It is said that the mark of the fall of an economy or, to go as far as a civilisation, is the disproportionate increase in the numbers of accountants and lawyers in society. Disproportionate to what, one may ask. For a community to propel to higher heights, we desperately need educators, engineers, scientists and health care workers. Educators to teach the young minds, engineers to push the boundary of the mind to explore new frontiers, scientists to discover ways to ease living and health professionals to ensure healthy bodies and minds for continual progress. As society becomes complicated, or the piece of the economic pie gets smaller, there would arise the need to protect or usurp material as much as possible, the legal way. After all, good times do not last forever.

Furthermore, the generation next would not be so resilient or antifragile to handle things given to them on a platter. Still, prosperity has to be continued down generations. Hence, there is an innate compulsion for good times to continue rolling within the family. Finances need to be fixed.

The significant jump in the numbers of lawyers and accountants may also mark the decline of morality. Whether the downfall of society is because of their increase or as a response to the fall, it is a matter of conjecture. When one sees things that used to be settled with a gentleman’s handshake amongst close-knitted friends or relatives now mandates legally signed documents to seal the deal, we know we are going down the rabbit hole of mutual distrust.

Washing dirty linen in public and broadcasting intimate detail to shame the other party is in vogue these days. The accusers think that they could play the victim card by putting all lewd pieces in the open. Little do they know, the public says a free daytime soap opera.

Trustfulness is now a forgotten virtue. When a person used to be entrusted with our monies, we did that not because he could give a beautiful account of our income and expenditure. We knew that there was no doubt about his trustworthiness as he would guard his assigned duty with his life. Now, we want a nicely executed (maybe concocted) Excel sheet with all the 't's well crossed and the 'i's meticulously dotted. Creativity and documentation supersede honesty and hard work.

Honest toiling and passion do not count in this material. All one needs to be successful and marketable in a colourful resumé with skills of articulation Lawyers and accountants help us towards that end. Teachers and medical personnel do not serve to broadcast their deeds. There do it because it is a service to mankind. At least, that is how it used to be.

[P.S. Writers and literary figures are still needed for they need to stir emotion and push boundaries, for we only know our limits when we push them to the brim.]

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Peel open the eye of ignorance

Doctor Strange (2016)

They say Dr Strange dabbles with magic in his crusade to fight the destructive forces that attack Earth. An intelligent but arrogant neurosurgeon in the real world, he is floored by a nasty accident that damaged his hands so severely that all the modern medicine could offer could not put his hands in working order again. No amount of aggressive physiotherapy or experimental avant-garde modality of treatment could resurrect his limp hands. They continued tremoring like leaves.

At this juncture, he heard of a patient with a transacted spinal cord who attained 100% recovery with alternative therapy when modern science failed him. Dr Steven Strange's subsequent journey for a cure led him to Kathmandu to things beyond his imagination. He got sucked into a world of 'magic', harvesting inner energies, dark forces and alternate dimensions. Things became so complicated that he found himself defending the Universe's right side against the Dark Forces.

I could not help but saw parallelism in how the story went to what is perceived in Vedantic teachings. Similarly, the mathematician Ramanujam saw his formulas spilt out of his mind as he sat and gazed at his devata, Namagiri. Hindus believe that the various Gods and Goddesses are a personification of conduits in pursuit of specific vibrations. Tune in a particular wavelength and see a sea of knowledge deep and too immense for the human mind. Seek Saraswati for an educational path, Durga for athletic endeavours, Lakshmi for a road of prosperity, Ganesha to remove obstacles, etcetera. 

Another exciting part of the story is the concept of time in a loop form. Unlike modern man's idea of time being linear, the Vedic teachings suggest that it could be cyclical. What takes place now had probably happened many times before and bound to happen again and again.

Among the many that get thrown in along the movie's course, one philosophical question is whether it is alright to be dishonest to win over your opponent? Is it acceptable for a leader to do the very thing that the rest of the subjugated are forbidden from? When life is simple, the rules of life must be followed to the tilt. As life becomes complex, rules are not so straightforward and can be bend.

We can draw our conclusions from the events in Ramayana and Mahabharata. Ramayana, depicting simpler times, portrayed Rama's life decision that was cut and dry. Do this and that. Simple. During Mahabharata, things become complicated. "They are your relatives, but you Arjuna still have to defeat them in battle. That is your dharma, the correct thing to do." In another scenario, it is perfectly expectable for Yudishtra to 'lie' that Drona's son Aswatthama 'died' when in fact, Yudishtra meant Astwatthama the elephant died. It was justified as Drona was almost undefeatable in war with his unfair usage of the celestial weapon. Drona's subsequent slaying was excused. These days we call these half-truths white lies.

Watch out for its sequel in 2022.

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Carved to perfection?

Under the Knife - A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations (2018)
Author: Arnold Van De Laar

Most nations in the world are forever looking out to keep their brains within their boundaries. Brains, besides economics, are the main ingredients of nation-building. For this, it needs the services of the top five professional vocations - architects, accountants, engineers, maybe lawyers and doctors.

Critical thinking and thinking outside the box are pre-requisites to unshackle the chains of poverty. Ironically, doctors are not expected to be too creative. They are merely expected to conform and follow the precedence as set by their seniors. No patients want to be treated by a 'cowboy'. New ventures can only be under the purview of peers of high standings. Misadventures stemming from unconventional, novel and experimental modalities will implore the wrath of the society, not praises for innovations.

This book is a collection of about 28 kinds of surgeries and a little of history associated with them. It goes as far back as to a time when analgesia was a long shot of brandy or chewing on some roots. And the removal of bladder stones meant cutting through the highly sensitive and vascular perineal region unanaesthetised and the area was to be left unsutured. Sutured had not been invented yet.

Jan De Vaat, a Dutch surgeon, had the dubious honour of operating on his own bladder stone. The lithotomy position, used by most gynaecological patients, got its name from these operations as it was in that position bladder stones were removed (lith - stone, otomy - cut).

It brings to the time when JFK was brought to the casualty unit in a Dallas hospital after being shot. The surgeon on-call had to perform a tracheostomy to create an airway, but the President succumbed to hypoxia due to a torn trachea and massive blood loss. JFK may have been saved if he had an airway secured within the 8-minute critical window. Probably that is why now an ambulance with a medical team accompanies any of the President's entourage to institute immediate treatment. A similar situation befell upon George Washington. He had a nasty throat infection for which an age-old practice of blood-letting was established instead of tracheostomy. He lost 2.5 litres of blood in 16 hours.

The practice of mandatory circumcision probably arose from Abraham's phimosis. The scriptures made mention of Abraham having painful erections; hence coitus was avoided, and Sarah remained childless. He sliced off the tight prepuce with a stone, and he was relieved of his misery. Sarah soon conceived. King Louis XVI probably suffered the same ailment, but he was relieved by ointments.

Many of the medical conditions here are explained in simple terms for the general public to follow the discussions. Empress Sisi of Austria's ability to witness a stab wound on her chest was due to the tamponade by her corset.
Obesity was an issue even during the early years of the Papacy. Of course, Popes were old when they were ordained. Nevertheless, the 5-year survival rate of Popes is 54%. Many died soon after installed. The lingering rumour is the allegation of foul play, but lifestyles diseases and obesity predominate.

Pope Paul John II was not so lucky with bullets. He once was shot in the abdomen and ended up with a temporary colostomy. He ceremoniously visited his assailant in prison.

Hammurabi had laid down a code for practising physicians. The patient cannot be charged if he is not cured of his ailment. The author relates the story of King Darius, who had an ankle fracture. Egyptians used to have great doctors, it seems, and one of their doctors supposedly treated it.

Many of the general surgeons' jobs revolve around the fact that we are biped. Ever since Lucy, our first ancestor, started walking erect, homo sapiens have to deal with varicose veins, inguinal hernia, haemorrhoids, disc prolapse, genital prolapse as well as hip and knee problems. Incidentally, Lucy is named such because of the song that was playing in the background when her fossils were excavated - Lucy in the Sky of Diamond.

Even though most people think Houdini died underwater, drowning after failing to escape from a locked chest, his cause of death is actually perforated appendicitis with peritonitis.

A dentist in Boston is credited with the honour of administering ether anaesthesia for a surgeon to operate a patient with neck tumour. The surgeon, so impressed with the technique, uttered the historical line, "Gentlemen, this is no humbug." Their European cousins, the British, thought otherwise. That was until the grand multiparous Queen Victoria, in 1847, a year later, had chloroform offered to her by John Snow. The follow-up was not all okay. Queen Victoria suffered postnatal depression, of course not related to anaesthesia. Biblical scholarly were quick to condemn the act as going against Nature as the scriptures state that women must endure labour pains.

With the royal seal established in medicine, other branches of medicine soon gain traction. The importance of handwashing, donning of gloves, hygiene and epidemiology were appreciated.

Because of the nature of human activities and the absence of antibiotics, gangrene was a common occurrence those days. The need for amputation was appreciated.

It is often said that one can train a monkey to perform surgeries. Still, the true mark of a surgeon is in his ability to deduce a diagnosis based on the clinical observations and to deal with complications if it should arise. Saying that history has shown that even experienced surgeons are guilty of running into trouble and failing to identify complications. A case in point was when pioneering vascular, Michael DeBakey, was requested to perform a splenectomy on the leukaemia-inflicted deposed Shah of Persia. A subphrenic abscess developed to be thought of a little bit too late even though the telltale signs were evident for all to elucidate. The monarch succumbed to the complications following the repeat surgery.

Even though the need and safety of surgery are established, some patients still refuse surgical procedures on personal grounds. Bob Marley rejected the idea of losing his big toe even though he was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. His religion, Raftarianism, is against losing body parts. He succumbed to metastasis.

Hippocrates had noted that cutting open the abdomen is always fatal, but we have come a long way doing safe laparotomies, laparoscopies and many abdominoplasties. Gynaecologists started the ball rolling with minimally invasive surgery with visualisation of pelvic organs. There is an interesting description of Einstein and his problem with a dissecting aortic aneurysm. Nissen, famous for his fundoplication surgery for acid reflux, wrapped his aneurysm with simple cellophane paper, which was to spur scarring around the vessel.

Castration remains one of the most frequent surgeries performed in the history of mankind. Maybe the word 'rib' in ancient scriptures somehow denotes the part of the penile 'bone'. In other words, a woman is a castrated male - God made Eve from Adam's rib!

This surgical operation is more than just a medical procedure. It has power-play and political implications. In the imperial courts of China, eunuchs play an essential role in handling affairs of the royal household. They were loyal and efficient workers. They were not mere servants but hold a very subtle unseen control of power in the kingdom.

During the barbaric tyranny of fanatic Islamic tribes, castration was mainstream. It remained a sure way to put cessation to the lineage of their non-believing conquests. And their subjects made good slave material to spur the economy. Even in recent times, chemical castration was instituted to homosexuals. Alan Turing was one such victim. Prostatic cancer is probably the only bona fide indication for castration of unaffected testes.

The place of placebo is firmly rooted in the holistic management of an ailing patient. Alan B Shepard, the first American to fly into space failed to partake in Apollo 11 lunar mission because of vestibular dysfunction. A dubious procedure of unproven value was done on him. In 1971, he finally landed on the last lunar landing through Apollo 14.

An interesting coincidence happened when JFK's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was treated by the same surgeon who treated JFK. He succumbed to the single bullet that pierced his abdomen, injuring many vital blood vessels. In his dying moment, the medical team try to whisper to him to spill the beans whether he was indeed the shooter, but he took the secret with him to the grave.

The first medical prosthesis was probably that for a patient with tuberculosis of the shoulder. It was made from hardened paraffin but failed miserably as the bone was still infected with T.B.

From the misadventures of Lenin who suffered from multiple strokes and paralysis, we appreciated the need for smooth laminar flow in the carotids.

Kocher, a doyen in general surgery, was a pioneer in gastric surgery together with Billroth and Halstead. Kocher was the first surgeon to be awarded the Nobel Prize and has many things named after him - instruments, incisions, signs, manoeuvres, points of references and even a crater on the moon. Ironically, he died after thyroid surgery.

What started as an operation on an electric eel in an Amsterdam zoo, electricity finally evolved to be used as a means to coagulate and cut tissues.

The book ends with pop culture references to the job in many famed Hollywood productions. From female surgeon, Dr Helena Russel in Space:1999 to Robot Surgeons in Star Wars, making surgeons superfluous to software (HAL 9000) overriding human commands in Kubrik's 2001:Space Odyssey and doctors reduced to corpuscle size to perform minimally invasive procedures in Fanstatic Voyage, many of the things that were considered to be in the domain of science fiction are now becoming mainstream.



(P.S. Just a tongue-in-the-cheek statement. The book failed to mention the contribution of other nations in the development of surgical skills and techniques. Maybe it is ignorance. The British, with the privilege of eavesdropping and spy watching on their subjects, discovered of an Indian peasant performing rhinoplasty on a British soldier was cut off by Tipu Sultan's Army.

 · 

On 9 October 1794, an operation to replace the nose, 

at that point no longer practised in the West, was 

reported in the Gentleman's Magazine. Cowasjee, 

a Mahratta, who had served in the British army as 

a bullock driver was captured by Tipu Sultan and 

mutilated by having his nose and one of his hands 

cut off. The nose was replaced from a flap of skin 

brought down from the forehead to cover the 

mutilated nose, an operation thought to have been

practised for centuries in India.

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Perks at a cost?

Heard an interview with Malaysia's premier cartoonist, Lat, recently. I was fascinated with the part of the interview when he was doing a cartoon strip in a national daily many years ago. He was doing a strip which ran daily on weekdays, and it was a continuing story. One Friday, he was stuck. He did not know how to continue with his narration, and he had until Sunday evening to submit his work.

He had a kind of writer's block, not knowing how to proceed. Rather than staring blankly at his wall, he thought a little unwinding would help. Downing one or two of his favourite beverages and whipping up a conversation with a couple of his occasional acquaintances, it suddenly dawned upon him. Inspiration sprang from everywhere, and he went on to complete his story to become everybody's satirist.

That is what my friends in the creative field tell me. Whenever they hit a brick wall, ideas come sprawling down when they go out and mingle with people. It seems people-gazing or just talking to them may stimulate the grey cells of the creative hemisphere of your brain to produce your next masterpiece.

Wait. Barristers are not called to the bar for nothing. The Bar is where they eel their way to find or create clients. A few drinks would make one philosophical and ponder about old age. Your friendly insurance agents will always hang around the bar to cook up a plan and pave the way for an affordable retirement plan!

Not so smooth sailing for the self-sacrificing practitioners of the profession of health.
You go to the house of ruins to unwind or you faithfully fulfil your duties as a son to attend some old auntie's grandchild's fifth birthday party and what you get? While you land your bite on your spicy pakora, an old uncle will start describing to you in minute details his abnormal bowel opening and his eternal struggle with haemorrhoids. Just as you politely ease your way by concocting a tale that somebody is calling you, another Auntie catches to illustrate in near demonstrative ways her distress with urinary incontinence. That is when you gaze your golden juice and wonder if you would ever look at fermented hop in the same way ever again. So much for a stimulating conversation and the unwinding needed for a soul exhausted caring for the sick.

To the people who recognise you, they would always see you as the man with the stethoscope, even if you are down to your swimming trunk. That is why many choose to remain incognito under the disguise of anonymity when travelling or appearing in social media interphases! To give peace of mind a chance to the soul...

Your Dharma, your funeral!

So goes the legend from the Indian sub-continent...

There was a massive war between kings. King Ram was embroiled in a battle, he must be a just king because he is Ram. His brother was morbidly injured. His army captured the enemy’s doctor and forced him to treat their wounded leader.
The good doctor asked his captors.
“How do you know that I would treat him to the best of my ability?”, he said. “For all you know I could not give him the best that is available.”

Ram, the righteous one, could do no wrong. Despite all the violence and destruction that were going on around him, like all the senseless killing and the uprooting of a whole mountain by the first superhero known to man, Hanuman, to retrieve a particular herbal remedy, Sanjeevani, he is still the good one.

In an authoritative voice, he verbalised, “It is your Dharma that you should be a healer. No matter who is injured, your job is to heal, irrespective of their political allegiance or social strata. I believe that you being a practitioner of the divine art of healing, would stay faithful to your calling and treat straight from the heart”.

That was then, aeons ago when the world was straight when a spade was a spade and white was white without shades of grey. Fast forward to the Kaliyuga era. Honest living with conducts holding dear to the call of the profession is now but only a script for display or a screenplay for the next blockbuster. In reality, the great healer has to guard his own rice bowl. Charity begins at home, he says. In the same breath, he laments, “self above service”. He recalls the time when the men in blue booked him for speeding even though he was risking his own life to attend to a grieving mother.

How about the hefty fine that he had to pay for the inefficiencies of his accountants? And the time, he was penalised for the incompetence of his subordinates. Even though they sing praises of teamwork, when trouble brews, they wash their hands, plead innocence and say, “ but you are the doctor! You should know.”

When you spend all your lifetime, caring and treating the sick, without heeding your own health, they say you are dedicated. But when you fall ill, they say you are stupid for not knowing to take a break for yourself.

They say you are the epitome of trust, but then, they also say that you are not trustworthy to keep private information and have to pay the government for you to retain patient information.

They say everybody needs a break from work to recharge and recuperate. But when doctors demand better living conditions, they say you are not dedicated. You give the profession a bad name. They would start their stories of “back in the day.....”

They squeeze money from you, but when you initiate your sob story of how difficult it is to make ends meet, they say you are money minded. They would quote the Hippocratic Oath.

And you are just a technician in the cogwheel of mankind who only has to do his job, that is all. The noble profession and care for humanity are merely catchphrases to lure the general public into another scheme of a business venture. Just do your work just like every job is extraordinary. Every one of us plays a role, directly or indirectly in the development of society. You are no different than the person beside you. If you slack on yours, we will use the long arm of the legal system and the media to shame to smack some sense to right the wrong and always make you on your toes!

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Different narratives but the story is the same.

By Danielle Teller



Source: Quartz

21 JUL 2015 - 8:53 AM  UPDATED 21 JUL 2015 - 8:53 AM

Yet another story recently surfaced about how doctors don’t die like everyone else. Doctors die quietly at home, surrounded by family—not in the hospital like most Americans. This difference has been ascribed to knowledge about the limits of modern medicine and experience with the horror of lingering deaths on life support, and there is doubtless truth in those ascriptions. As a physician and writer, I believe that there is also another more subtle but equally important contributor, and that has to do with the stories we tell ourselves about death. 

The language we use about death is illustrative of our attitudes. We speak of fighting and overcoming disease, of courage and bravery, of beating the odds. We also speak of giving up, letting go, losing the battle. It’s as though we believe that death isn’t inevitable, that we have some choice in the matter. We even say to one another, “If I die,” and “If you die,” not “When we die”—as though our probability of dying weren’t exactly 100%. 

Our society has stories about deaths that are admirable and deaths that are not. The narratives aren’t just about people who jump in rivers to save drowning children or who are shot in an attempt at armed robbery. An airplane passenger who dies in a terrorist bombing is considered a hero, but if that same airplane passenger had died of a stroke before the terrorist boarded the plane, he would have just been considered unfortunate. Diseases even get different levels of cool points. Cancer is most often associated with the battle narrative; people who haven’t yet died from complications of their kidney failure don’t get to call themselves “survivors.” Heart attacks are easier to talk about than liver cirrhosis. AIDS was perhaps the most shameful way to die until activists changed the narrative, and now it is a noble disease. Breast cancer underwent the same gilding with pink gold thanks to activism. 

When I was in high school, my English teacher had us read a short story about a man whose brother had been killed by a falling pig. I have often thought about that character, about how complicated grieving can be if your loved one dies in a way that is socially uncomfortable. Death by falling pig is disturbingly comical, but grieving is also complicated for those whose loved ones have died from causes our society considers shameful, such as mental illness or addiction. It should not be so. A child who lost her mother to complications of schizophrenia is just as deserving of our sympathy as a child who lost her mother in the World Trade Center on 9/11. The manner of their deaths should not alter our opinion of the value of those women’s lives or the significance of their daughters’ losses. 

The narratives our society uses for death are not just a problem for surviving family members, they are perhaps an even greater problem for the dying. We want to believe that death is optional, so we don’t talk about it, and we don’t make plans for our deaths. When diagnosed with terminal illness, we focus on the fight, not on making our exit from the world as graceful as possible. When our family members are on their deathbeds, we show our love for them by lauding their courage, by not “giving up,” and by exhorting physicians to “do everything.” 

The secret doctors know is that the stories aren’t true. There’s nothing more noble about dying from cancer than from alcoholism. There isn’t a battle against death to be fought, just treatments to endure when the disease is treatable and symptoms to endure when the treatments are futile. Death has always been inevitable, but once their deaths are imminent, doctors just want to be comfortable and to spend the last days with family. It turns out that this is what most of us want, and we can have it if we can just bring ourselves to let go of narratives that don’t make sense and get more comfortable with the truth.

This article was originally published on Quartz. © All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

We’re blessed to be in a profession that helps

http://www.thestar.com.my/Opinion/Letters/2014/12/11/Were-blessed-to-be-in-a-profession-that-helps/

I AM a registrar (medical officer in training as a specialist) in one of the busiest hospitals in Malaysia.

I did my housemanship training here, went for my district posting, got into the specialist programme, and am now back in the same hospital where it all began.

Every once in a while, I come across a link sent to me via social media, regarding housemen, and their plight. Like how they are expected to work 75 hours; how medical officers and specialists are their bane; how they don’t get enough time for lunch or tea; and how medical officers have nothing else to do but make their already miserable lives more miserable.

Allow me to share the other side of the story.

My job requires me to work from 8am to 5pm. That’s a nine-hour job, with one hour for lunch. So that’s 45 hours per week, give or take.

That said, my work starts at 7.30am. I need to know my cases, especially the overnight admissions, before the specialists arrive. Sometimes, they arrive at 7.15am because they have got operations and clinics to run.

We don’t wait at the machine to punch out at 5pm sharp either. Sometimes, though not always, we have to stay back for hours because of certain cases.

Most of us do about six calls a month. Meaning, we punch in at 8am and punch out at 1pm the next day or 5pm the next day depending on the department’s policy.

Weekends, 24-hour calls, you don’t really hear us complaining, do you? Given the chance, I would rather spend the weekend with my family, rather than slog in the hospital for a mere RM220.

On average, the medical officer works 54 to 80 hours a week depending on the number of calls. And this varies from taking referals in the emergency department to doing life saving surgery at 3am.

So, the question arises, why do we do it?

To my junior doctors, we are blessed. We are in a blessed profession. We can alleviate pain, remove devastating tumours, make people walk again, we save lives.

We are blessed to be in a profession, where parents, children, sisters and brothers thank us for what we do. Be it a simple dislocated shoulder to a severe heart attack, we do what we can to help people.

When you look at consultants, they are where they are, not by whining. They are there because of the countless hours they put in, both with the books, as well as in the hospital.

There is no doubt, everyone wants more pay and less work, me included.

But dear housemen, take a good hard look at the person next to you. This is going to be the person who will eventually take care of you and your children.

If you have even a little bit of insight, you will know how to correct things, and at least be a better person, if not a better doctor.

MED REG

Kuala Lumpur