India celebrates Doctors’ Day every year on 1 July, in memory of Bidhan Chandra Roy (1 July 1882-1 July 1962), a well respected physician who was also the second chief minister of the state of West Bengal.
While the day serves to highlight the importance of medicine in society, it should also be an opportunity for medical professionals to reflect on their profession and the challenges facing it.
Medicine in India remains a prized profession, broadly commanding respect from its citizenry. However, recent years have also seen the profession face controversies. While some doctors do acknowledge that there are serious issues plaguing medical practice in the country, other members of the profession have also felt that they are being targeted and have unrealistic expectations heaped on them.
We catalogue a few areas we feel are important for medical professionals in India to contemplate and respond to:
Corruption: While not a new phenomenon, the extent to which corruption has seeped into medical practice is a major crisis for the profession. Right from anomalies/cheating in entrance examinations for medical courses, fraud in medical education, to corruption in medical practice (an example being cut practice), it’s quite clear that regulation has served as a poor barrier to avert these practices.
Trust deficit: There has been a rising number of incidents of doctor-patient (or patient family) conflicts, as evidenced by the regular occurrence of (unacceptable) attacks on doctors in India.
Interprofessional healthcare practice: Doctors need to take the lead in working with allied professionals—such as nurses, psychologists, medical technicians, and social workers etc—to establish an approach to healthcare practice that is truly interprofessional in nature. This means abandoning traditional hierarchical practices and opening up channels for respectful communication, mutual respect, and opportunities for leadership for all team members involved.
Public engagement: Doctors need to be more proactive in engaging with media and the public. Dispelling misconceptions, providing information on prevention and clarity on medical interventions (and alternatives), and building health literacy is an important social role for medical professionals. Social media can be effectively tapped towards this purpose.
Collective action: Doctors in India often work in difficult circumstances, for long hours, and with limited resources.
Anant Bhan is a researcher in global health and bioethics, and adjunct visiting professor at Yenepoya University, India.
Bhavna Dhingra is a faculty member in the department of paediatrics at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhopal.
Source : http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2015/06/30/doctors-day-in-india/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork
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