RIFLE RANGE BOY

Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran Out of Patients  Author: Adam Kay There used to be a time when only the crêmê à la crêmê would be handpicked from public examination scorers to study medicine in state-sponsored medical schools. The competition to be admitted as a medical student was so keen. Entrance would mean assured employment by the State, together with the prestige, perks and elevation of social status to the family that came with it. That is what everyone thought, anyway. A career in Obstetrics used to be considered quite noble. Doing the work of a stork, being there, and bringing joy via new birth was considered honourable. The team did not mind the long hours and gruelling work conditions, as they were muffled by the lustful cry of a newborn and wiped clean by the tears of joy of a parturient mother.  Again, it is fulfilling no more. What was a noble and fulfilling profession became a pressure cooker. A patient walks into a consultation room, wanting hassle-fre...

©FG You tell yourself the citizens of the country sponsored your medical studies. With a fragment of the cost of what you really need to pay, for peanuts, you got a degree. Of course, it was no easy walk in the park on your part, either. All that midnight vigil, the missed outings with buddies and the humiliations at work by seniors later on in life were your sacrifices. You were convinced that your job description would read as crucial as a bomb disposal unit. Your vocation would turn the direction of the country, it seemed. Not to forget the stresses and guilty feelings that haunted you as your patients died in your tour of duty. You can but not complain about your predicament as it was entirely your decision to plunge head in. Some reverence comes with the job, nevertheless. Those, however, were too few and far between. The same hands that express gratitude to you would be the same ones that point accusatory charges against you. You thought they were placing you on a dais like they ...

Sir Robert Hutchison Father of clinical methods A friend, during our stint as house officers, told me about an incident that happened during his medical student days when he was studying in Manipal, India. An American elective medical student had joined the group's ward rounds. The old Professor of Medicine was showing them the correct technique of examining the respiratory system. He laboriously punctuated the teaching rounds by asking basic science questions and snarling occasional sarcastic remarks, for not understanding the basics. He was showing the green medical students the art of inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation. The American student, failing to see the point of such a laborious examination of a single patient, raised his hand. "Professor, wouldn't it be better if we just send the patient for a chest X-ray?" he quipped. That is the state of medicine now. We have lost the art of practising medicine. It is just about diagnostic proc...