Medical Profession – A Noble Profession

Medical profession is considered a noble profession and the doctors have been always compared and equated next to God. The word noble means that a doctor should have qualities like compassion, caring, giving, sharing, concern, helping, etc.

A doctor is supposed to treat a person irrespective of caste, creed, religion, financial status, or social status. His sole concern is and should be to remove the miseries of the suffering patients.

 His sewa or service should be selfless and not oriented towards publicity. To provide that and to get a complete satisfaction of the job a doctor needs a proper infrastructure, basic money and a proper security.

Nobleness of medical profession cannot be compared with the selfless service of the military, which is a specialized job which involves fighting for security of the country and getting postings on borders and living a life where you may be away from your family for months & years. For non-border areas in the country the same job is performed by the police who perform the same functions but stay in the cities and metro areas. Security of the country therefore has two tiers one by the military and the other by the military. Military people have special privileges as the job involves sacrifice and risk and uncertainty of life.

 One of the questions always raised is that doctors do not go to villages. Going to villages is like going to the border by a military person as in a village the doctor invariably will have to go and live without his family as the village cannot provide the type of infrastructure, schooling or college which a doctor may like his children to have.

 Nobleness of a profession is not synonymous with sanyas, tyaga or vairagya. A doctor has to be sincere in his actions and thoughts and not necessarily adopt and live a life of a sanyasi.  A he is only supposed to follow what he or she preaches to the community like not smoking, regularly exercising and meditation twice a day.

 The answer is that the government on the lines of military should come out with rural medical doctor’s force that should have the same facilities, status and perks like a military person gets.

 People are also living and suffering in the cities. Who is going to take care of theme of all the doctors are in the villages. City population also faces emergencies, accidents and suffers from lethal diseases. For doctors who are practicing in the city and not getting settled in the rural areas, their nobleness of the profession should be judged as to how much time and sincerity they provide for removing the sufferings of the patients. This cannot be equated to the money they earn. Earning money has nothing to do with the quality of service. Every doctor in the private sector should give 10% of his time for the free services, 30% of his time to subsidized services and rest of his time to charge money from rich patients as per acceptable rates in the market.

 The other alternative is allowing commercialization of the rural services. Today cold drinks and junk food is reaching the rural areas without any problems. Executives are being posted by these countries left and right in these areas. Once the health services are commercialized doctors will be posted by these companies in the rural areas without any problem.

 Today no car or vehicle can go on the road without insurance if the same law is made compulsory for the human body; the private sector will jump in opening district health centers all over the country.

 The other need is to promote basic primary care through naturopathy, homeopathy and Ayurveda, which does not require sophisticated infra structure, technologies and hospitals.