A weird event occurred at a Mumbai hospital. The relative of a patient reportedly tried to attack and injure a surgeon’s hands as he came out of the facility.
The story that unfolded was bizarre. The attacker had been enraged because he and his family had sold everything they had to collect enough funds for a cardiac operation on a member of the family. The way the story goes the surgeon agreed to do the surgery but, and here is where it gets incredible, half way into the procedure the surgeon stops, leaves the operating theater and informs the waiting family that the single bypass is now a tripe and the patient is in much worse cardiac shape than had been estimated and the cost of the operation is now significantly higher so what do they want done.
Unable to access any more money or give the financial promise the distraught family gave up all stood by helplessly as the surgeon sewed up the patient sans the procedure and that was that. Hence the justification for the assault. On the face of it, the surgeon should be boiled in oil.
But I don’t believe it happened this way. I believe that the story built up its own momentum and became fancier in the narration, with everyone adding a little dollop of imagination into the storyline.
For one, while I am prepared to concede that the family doctor image has vanished and you don’t get the medical equivalent of Norman Rockwell idealism what with medicine now being big business it is pretty far fetched to accept that a surgeon stopped midway in a procedure, and in front of his assistants, the nurses, the anesthetist and the interns tootled off to renegotiate the contract.
It doesn’t happen that way. What could have happened is that the surgeon could have re-evaluated his estimate and discovered it was a more major operation. He is as much a victim of the system. If medical aid is now measured on a ‘pay and get’ basis for its quality then why should the doctor be exempted. You don’t have to like it, you don’t have to endorse it, but when reputations can be cashed in for top dollar, and there are people prepared to jump the queue the human in the doctor goes for it…just like the commercially minded trader in the corner shop.
The fault lies in us that we assume that the medical fraternity is, ipso facto, different or, must be different because it serves the people. Just because we believe in the romantic savior image doesn’t automatically mean it is that way.
We don’t expect it from anyone else, not from lawyers or real estate agents or teachers (who aren’t well paid anyway) or ourselves.
Yet, the moment it comes to medicine we are looking at pro bono work and infusing the tribe with much virtue. Of course, in a perfect world there would be practitioners toiling to reduce suffering and offering comfort to the sick. Out there are thousands doing it today, men and women ready to soothe the sick without a care for money, willing to suffer deprivation in inhospitable conditions, volunteering their power and their glory and they have to be admired for it.
But that does not make the more commercially inclined medical entity a bad person. Everyone works inside the parameters of the system. If the system allows for a negotiable deal where good medicine comes with a price tag, so be it. What angers us is that it does not conform to our image of what a surgeon should be, we believe implicitly that the surgeon in this case should have cheerfully gone on and done the triple bypass. What we don’t ask are the riders to the act: who would pay for the extra charges, the extended operational procedures themselves the longer recuperation and recovery, the whole package.
More importantly, where would the surgeon stop being charitable. After ten patients, twenty, fifty?
You see. Either it is open house or it is not.
