A resident doctor relates his gruelling work day
The issue of never-ending work days of doctors seem to be, well, never ending. The Times of India recently carried a report that detailed a resident doctor’s work day at a government hospital. The report hopefully would help the public appreciate the efforts that the Indian doctors put into his or her work, every day. The key aspects of the report are given here.
Beginning on a note of sleeplessness
The report begins with the alarm ringing, which brings the doctor awake. Or almost so. For the doctor’s immediate reaction to the alarm is to hit the snooze button. The four hour sleep he had isn’t enough- he had to see admitted patients till late on Sunday night.
However, the thoughts of the long queue of patients at the OPD of the Government College and Hospital(GMCH) don’t allow him an easy sleep. Some of the patients, may need immediate attention. So he drags himself out of the bed. His choice of colour for the shirt for the day is blue. He skips breakfast and exits the MARD hostel, the stethoscope hanging from his neck. The apron, he wears on the way to the OPD.
Dr Varun Khurana(name changed) hails from Bhandara. He is pursuing MD in medicine(1st year). He is also a resident doctor with the GMCH’s medicine department.
Non-stop duty for forty hours
“It’s that time of the week when I have to perform non-stop duty for 40 hours in the medicine department. All this while, I will be sitting at OPD for six hours, followed by my ward duty simultaneously at the male and female wards. I can be seen wandering across the ward, keeping track of all the patients and answering their relatives’ queries. Half of my time is gone coping up with the work that should have technically been done by the nurses and attendants. In between, I might have a meal if time permits. In short, I am supposed to be capable of more than an average human being,” he says.
He arrives at the OPD by 8 AM. His work day begins by seeing a 50 year old paralytic patient. The patient has to be admitted immediately. By 10 AM, the hunger really starts to bite in. But the long line of patients hardly give him time to breathe. “I am running 30 minutes late, trying to catch up and preparing for the inevitable and surprises that pop up,” he says.
Upon his instruction, an attendant takes one of the patients to be admitted in a ward. It’s now 11 AM.
At 1 PM, the doctor is wondering where the attendant had disappeared to after getting the patient admitted. “Things become tough because of fewer attendants assisting us. Even the existing ones are inactive,” he says.
His OPD duties come to an end at 2 PM. Now, he can have lunch, or so he thinks. Because a paralytic patient who is brought in suddenly has him going straight to the ward number 26- the female medicine ward.
By the time he gets to eat the first meal of the day, it’s already 4:45 PM. That too, he has to have in a rush since he knows that many of the patient’s relatives await for his guidance.
“I am fine with briefing the relatives. What bothers me is that new relatives of patients arrive every other hour. They all want to hear the entire story again and again. It eats up a lot of time,”he says.
Trying hard to be functional
The next morning comes around.. Without enough food or sleep, it’s hard for the doctor to be functional. Even brushing his teeth is out of the question But he tries his best to keep himself going.
Before the 8 AM round of his senior begins, the young doctor starts compiling patients’ files for presentation. The doctor has been multitasking for quite a while now. Paper works and rendering treatment aside, his job becomes even harder with the lack of attendants and nurses. There are times when the doctor himself has to take the patient’s blood, give it for sampling and visit the blood bank to specify blood requirement and get the blood issued from the bank.
The day after that is no better. After a sleepless night, the doctor is ‘functional’ again at 11 AM- a patient needs to be shifted to the ICU. No attendant is around to carry the patient on the stretcher. The doctor asks the sweeper on duty to give him a hand. But the sweeper refuses, saying it’s not his job.
So that no time is wasted, he moves the patient with the help of other residents. “All the time we could spend on giving quality treatment to the patients is gone because of lack of assisting staff,” he says.
From morning till 2 PM, not even a single attendant is seen at the ward.
The angry patient’s kin
Around 2 PM, the doctor is about to collect a patient’s blood. That’s a when a person whose father has just been discharged, asks the doctor to get someone to help him shift his dad to a wheelchair so that he can be wheeled downstairs.
Dr Khurana pointed at a wheelchair kept outside the ward, asking the man to do it himself. The latter isn’t pleased with it, giving the doctor a hard stare before going away.
“I might have given him the wrong impression. At times, relatives are not at fault when they get aggressive since most of the work, which is supposed to be done by staffers, have to be executed by the relatives. Here, the relatives are asked to pull stretchers, take the patients for diagnosis, and even change their clothes. Who wouldn’t get frustrated by all this?”
“I might finish my duty at 10pm, if the conditions are favourable. All the Mondays and Tuesdays are like this. We at least get to eat and sleep in the rest of the week,” he says.
“The last time I got leave, that too for three days, was in October-end on Diwali. Before that, I was granted a four-day leave in June when I was accidentally pricked by a needle while performing RBS on an HIV positive patient. I required 28 days of virus therapy, which is extremely heavy and creates hallucination as well. Ideally, I should have rested for all the 28 days, but the college gave me four-day leave, that too if I take therapy from GMCH,” he adds.