What does it mean to be in this profession?
The year I got selected, some 275 thousand students appeared for the exam and approximately 2,500 got what they aspired for! Less than 1% of total!!
That by default makes us the ‘chosen few’ for the job. This also means that we have been chosen as individuals who can be trusted upon with other people’s lives. This is definitely a great honour and thus we can be proud of our achievements so far. But we should also remember that this privilege also brings with it immense responsibilities- to patients, to society and above all to humanity.
Let me elaborate what I mean by it:
Before entering the World of Medicine whatever we did, we were doing it with ‘us’ at the centre. We watched movies, cricket matches, listened to music, roamed on mall, played games, read books, novels, slept, worked-out, partied etc all because we felt like it and it was fun doing all. Our all interactions with this world were solely about ourselves.
But now things have changed. Everything that shapes us now will somehow be affecting our patients in future. So the way we treat our life is no longer just about us. Whatever we do, we think, we add to our clinical skills will affect the people we treat. We miss one lecture or practical or a procedure and we might be jeopardising someone’s life later on! May be I am exaggerating too much but still it implies that from now on at every crossroad that we come across in life, we have the responsibility to make the positive and right choice for ourselves so that we can be the best physician/ surgeon for our patients!
Entering this medical field has ushered us into the world of understanding human body and the limit to which it can be pushed... which we do realize during 30 hour long night duties when we try hard to remain a ‘human’ but on a really long night shift, we tend become more like a “programmed bio-mechanical individual” working automatically based on algorithms, following the protocols and guidelines rather than a calm sensible doctor with the ‘human-touch’ which the patient expects us to be...!!
So, it’s easy to get trapped in this world of medicine... but yet along with all these chaos, we do meet interesting colleagues, mentors and friends... who make this interesting journey of ours little more exciting and fun... So, Let's not forget to ENJOY! After all, beside a doctor, we are all human beings with certain needs and so are our patients! :-)
Virat Kuntalam
IGMC, Shimla
