The Doctors & the Cheap medias!

[PS: - I am not directly or indirectly associated with any news channel/print media/political party/student union etc. There is no conflict of interest while framing this article]

Some say doctors are second only to god, some say doctors are the noblest professionals. For some, the

above beliefs may not hold true all the time & the reason is amalgamation of variety of factors like; quality of treatment, behavior of doctors, work load etc. Because of the diversity in working atmosphere & payment structure, we shouldn’t expect every doctor to be second only to god. Frankly speaking, no doctor wants that tag too. It doesn’t matter whether you are in cricket field or in Operation Theater; you would be either over-praised or over-criticized. We, the Indians are emotionally extreme. We can worship & kick the same person in different situations. You can well visualize the situation in the scenes of old Hindi movies where the actors scold the God while facing crisis but deep within they tend to carry limitless devotion. The same thing happens in real life of doctors. People will praise you when you successfully remove gall bladder in 99% of the occasions, but they will voluntarily & seriously defame you if you injure the bile duct in 1% of the cholecystectomy surgeries. One single mistake turns the God into a Dog!

            Mistakes are unavoidable byproducts available free of cost in all types of professions. But the

mistakes committed by the health professionals get the unwanted limelight because they are in direct contact with society. If a software engineer commits a mistake while programming something, it never affects the general population directly. On the other hand, doctors don’t get the privilege to rectify the mistakes they commit. So these factors project a pseudo-magnification of a doctor’s professional/personal mistakes. Now coming to the term ‘Cheap media’, I admit that I have developed life threatening allergy to them. These are the ultra-low profile TV news channels & news papers owned by some of the illiterate & tadpole-brained politicians. Government hospitals are bread& butter for some of these Medias. Their journalists are well aware of the fact that people are highly sensitive towards news related to health professionals. Believe it or not, in >90% of the educated Indian families you should find someone who has prepared for medical entrance exam & >90% of them don’t get through. So I don’t rule out the jealousy factor out of my equation. The cheap medias always take this advantage by negatively exaggerating a news related to doctors. When the relatives of a patient beat a doctor for a wrong reason, it is never telecasted/ printed in these channels/news papers. But when the reverse happens for self defense, the reporters run faster than Usain Bolt to publish the news. There is nothing called ‘Self Defense’ in a doctors life! Nobody realizes the amount of workload & stress a doctor has to handle in real life. Guess what is the biggest joke by the judiciary system? It is the act that if someone beats a doctor on duty, there will be non-billable arrest warrant against the person. I have never seen/heard it being implemented anywhere in India.

I am not saying that doctors are universally innocent. But the way these cheap medias are projecting doctors makes me feel like being a criminal. Even the relatives & friends of cameramen/drivers/sweepers/peons of the news agencies show their red eyes to doctors while coming to hospitals. Unfortunately there is no media coverage for the red eyes. It is hard for the doctors to remain tight-lipped when these kind of people unnecessarily abuse in the stressful working atmosphere. So it is time for the people associated to TV/print media to have some introspection. They should recheck their credentials before prematurely abusing doctors without any evidence. What our health system badly requires now is a healthy relationship between the doctors & the patients; it will be great if the media can act as a vital cog in the wheel of the relationship.

[If you are related to TV/print media & you find this article offensive, then I am NOT AT ALL SORRY. Because I am writing my heart out & it feels true]