Many times your current situation governs your frame of mind. I was sitting amidst a gathering of people who had collected to mourn the death of a close relative. Suddenly my wife handed over a mobile to me, where a doctor from Kolkata was there on the phone. This call was regarding the discussion related to the need for surgery for a knee-ligament injury of my son who studies in Kolkata. I asked the doctor a genuine question, regarding the urgency of the surgery, as my son was having examinations in the forthcoming week. I also needed some time to reach Kolkata from my place of stay, which is Lucknow. An unexpected doctor’s reply, gave me a reason to write this post. The doctor’s reply was, “We are taught medical books written by foreign authors, but we are asked to advise Indian patients. If you don’t get it operated, your son’s knee will be completely damaged in next ten years.” As I have already told you about my frame of mind, rather than asking current precautions and other medical guidance, I enquired about the cost of surgery and admission procedure. So, a little irritated doctor advised me to talk to the hospital manager for any further query.
“Foreign authors, Indian patients”, this remark kept boggling my mind since last few days. I don’t know why such a remark was made for my simple query related to urgency of surgery. May be because, doctor was preconditioned because of queries of other patients that he might have been counseling that day. May be he might be struggling with an answer to this question while he was doing his medical degree. I do not have the expertise to comment on effectiveness of our medical system which is based on knowledge evolved on foreign case studies. What I can definitely say is that our experts do work under a great pressure everyday in the absence of concrete research based on our own data. While talking about the response variations due to a particular frame of mind, we do need to address the basics behind such responses.
Dr. Sunil Ji Garg
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