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Opinion, commentary, and notes from the editorial team.

31–33 of 33 articles Page 4 of 4
  1. 13 Feb 2020 10 min read

    What I learnt as a doctor

    “Get into the medical course and your life is made”, was the advice often given by elders during our school days. I am currently 36. I got admitted into a medical college 18 years ago on my birthday. To put it simply, half of my life has gone into training and then applying what I have learnt in this field. Throughout my life I had adjectives like hardworking, brilliant, intelligent so on and so forth thrown at me. However, a cursory look at my bank balance makes me wonder if there is any justification for such adjectives! Of course, a lot of people would surmise that bank balance is hardly the correct yardstick to judge a doctor’s life. If clinical excellence and financial success are the parameters to grade a doctor’s success, a 2x2 table can be designed to fit doctors into one of the four groups depending on the presence or absence of the two attributes.(I am not sure if my community medicine teachers in Mangaluru would approve of my application of a 2x2 table!). Dichotomy in the me

    Dr. Tandava Krishnan
  2. 13 Feb 2020 4 min read

    Medical Omerta: The doctors’ oath of silence and how far would you go to keep it that way?

    The Supreme Court of India on 1st July 2015 awarded a compensation of 1.8 crore rupees as damages to a girl who was rendered blind due to lack of timely referral by paediatricians for Retinopathy of prematurity(ROP) check up. It reminded me of a similar incident during my fellowship. A child with both eyes stage 5 ROP with closed funnel retinal detachment was referred to the hospital. After the consultant broke the sad news to the parents, a flurry of questions followed which was patiently answered to. Finally, the visibly shaken mother asked,” Doctor, had the paediatrician referred the child on time to an ophthalmologist, could the vision have been saved.” It was a very tricky question, considering the hospital’s policy of not passing adverse comments on the work done by other Doctors. The answer by the consultant was,” I do not know if the vision could have been saved but I am pretty sure that the child is alive only because of the good work done by the paediatrician.” As a student,

    Dr. Tandava Krishnan
  3. 13 Feb 2020 4 min read

    First among equals

    “What makes a doctor successful?” This was the question that always figured in my mind ever since I decided to be a doctor. And by successful, I did not mean prosperous (financially) but an ability to gain the trust of his/her patients. Logically, every doctor reads the same set of books does the same battery of investigations and prescribes the same set of medicines. So the fact that patients seem to flock to some doctors more than the others intrigued me. The candid reply I got when I posed this question to a surgery professor was, “You need to be a back bencher in a class to become a successful doctor!” He further elaborated, “Back benchers are good to converse with, take life as it comes and do not take things too seriously. These are attributes which patients appreciate. They warm up to people who are easy going and talk freely.” “You need to speak to the patient in the vernacular language”, chipped in my grandmother from Udupi, who sensed a slight hesitation on my part to learn K

    Dr. Tandava Krishnan