Three reasons why you should do medicine in India

For a better experience you should read this in Kit Harrington's voice or Emilia Clarke's; British accent basically. 

There are some of us among you who became doctors over the last decade. Quite an interesting choice I must say.

I wonder what urged me to embark on this bittersweet adventure. 

I am sorry for transitioning from 'Us' to I'. I am probably confused or wrong.  I am just as confused or wrong as the authorities who determine the future of medical education in this country.

Anyways back to why I or we did medicine.

Some of us were merely fascinated by it. Some of us were told to do medicine and we didn't mind it. Some of us were forced to and we did mind that. Some of us were lucky enough to have parents who were doctors and loved what they did and hence chose to do the same; More like a 'follow the blueprint' situation.

Some of us loved the urgency and the late night calls to the hospitals that our parents or other members of the family had to respond to as doctors. Like a savior called to save the day. I wonder if we would have taken up the job of a police officer or a night watchman if we had that as a blueprint to follow. (Should have)

So yes! We did do medicine and mind you it fascinated us. The beauty of understanding the human body, the process of learning it's intricacies that make it's every function so unique,  the observation of the ailments that plague the mind and body in an attempt to distort it's integrity and the evolution of how we can identify and hopefully resolve said ailments; that process fascinated us a lot. I think I  should use me instead of us here.

 It fascinated me a lot.

I started practicing as a doctor and I enjoyed it more than anything. I loved and still love talking to a patient and their family. Quite obviously it's much harder when the illness can't be cured or if there is a threat of assault on the doctor. But otherwise it was mostly ok.

Oh did you get appalled by my mention of assault on a doctor?? Oh it's quite common you see. I had a helmet thrown at me last year and as I wasn't so fat I dodged it. Some of my other friends who are quite fat might have been hit by the helmet. 

I also got a death threat. 

I am sorry if all this is too boring. You should contact some of my colleagues in certain other parts of the country if you want to hear about doctors being beaten to death or stabbed etc.

So yes, I did medicine, I liked working as a doctor and then I decided to do my post graduation. I am from India. I wrote my NEET PG exam which was postponed by 8 months on 2 separate occasions owing to the threat of the covid 19 pandemic. 

Oh this is interesting. So they thought that if all the junior doctors gather  to write an exam, we might cause more spread of the disease or worse succumb to it , than if we went and worked in covid wards instead. 

That's like saying....

Actually I can't think of  something that stupid and I did consider that friend in class 3 who told me that if I were to swallow a seed and drink water, a tree would grow inside me.

We then worked during the second wave and I won't over dramatize that as it's basically our job.  Instagram tends to make that sound amazing. It's not really. 

Some of our colleagues died due to covid and not due to assaults or injuries.

The wave passed and our exam was announced which we most happily gave. 

Ok fine!

Which I most happily gave.

It's however been 4 months after the exam results have come out and the process of admitting post graduates is still far away owing to last minute changes in reservation policies leading on to court cases interspersed with diwali, Christmas and New year holidays.

So here we stand, confused, wondering if we actually made the right choice so many years ago.

It's a good thought. Quite late in life but that's ok. I spoke to a lot of people who like me chose to stay on in India and pursue medicine and what follows is a mere summary of the different opinions I received.

 

Here are three valid and logical reasons to do medicine in India:

1. Your parents are in India and they need to be taken care of. They don't want to move to another place. So you stay.

2. You parents built a hospital or a nursing home and it's viewed as a disgrace to sell it. You have to stay back and run it thereby sealing the fate of your children also, if any.

3. You are banned from traveling to another country for life and you did MBBS for one of the reasons mentioned earlier.

The joy of practicing medicine dies when the flame that burns inside us, the flame that helps us be better doctors is extinguished by a system that is meant to help us.