Is He in the Emergency Room to Sleep? By Walid Farooqi (guest writer)

Photo-credit: Saniya Kamal, AKU MBBS '18

“Is he in the Emergency Room to sleep?”- These words still resonate in my head. These words still affect me. They still cut deep into me and make me question the very basis of why I chose my profession. Times like these are when you understand the bitter truth of reality; of what medicine is. When I took the Hippocratic Oath 5 years ago, I had no idea. I had no idea of the position I was going to hold; of how many lives I was going to touch; of the power my white lab coat inherently held. I now understand.

“Is he in the Emergency Room to sleep?” – These words not only show how important we are in society, but also how important we think we are. Across the country, working in the emergency room automatically offers immunity to medical personnel to do almost whatever they want, however they want, all under the rather overly used banner “we’re trying our very best”. Is this true? Or is this a façade? Do we care more about what we treat or who we treat?

“Is he in the Emergency Room to sleep?” – Did our training do this to us? Did repeated interactions with all the different pathologies we could think of- common and rare- shape us this way? Did we exchange knowledge for humanity or compassion (or maybe a bit of both)? Did our monotonous routine make us into this machine that just doesn’t care? Doesn’t care about the fact that the kid had come to the Emergency Room with pain? With so much pain that he could not lie still? And yet, when he did manage to get respite in the form of sleep, we talked of waking him up; not because we had to in order to help him, no; but simply because we forgot to do an examination on him that we should have done when we came in. This raises yet more questions: Did we ever earn the right to make someone suffer just because of our incompetency? And instead of being sorry, mockingly joke about the kid sleeping?

“Is he in the Emergency Room to sleep?” – We health care professionals are given more respect and autonomy here than anywhere in the world; here, where you will never see a patient doubt a doctor’s advice for even a second. Where the phrase “Daktar sahib, apko jo munasib lagey, ap kijiey”- Doctor, do whatever you deem necessary (loosely translated) - is so common, its borderline impossible to give autonomy back to the patients, because they will never in a million years make a life decision that they themselves have to live with. Why? Because they believe that we, the doctors, are their saviors, their supermen-in-white. But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe because we control so many peoples’ lives, we, in our heads, subconsciously bump our role up from “God-like” to “God”.

“Is he in the Emergency Room to sleep?” – Speaking of superheroes, a phrase from yet another one comes to mind: “With great power comes great responsibility”; the responsibility to help the people looking up to us for healing them. The emphasis here is on healing them. Not on treating them. The difference between the two is simple: understanding and taking care of patients as a whole and as human beings; not just as organic matter with certain pathologies. Yet in our practice, this simple difference seems to get lost amidst the huge patient influx during clinical hours. Not more than a handful of consultant physicians will go out of their way to step into the shoes of their patients. The situation is even grimmer for the resident doctors. Medicine is, and always was, meant to be patient-centric. Yet, because of the massive respect the people have for us, they never question us. This situation begs the question: Is exploiting this vulnerability of people our only strength?

“Is he in the Emergency Room to sleep?” – The sad bit was not that the senior doctor on duty eventually did wake the child up. The sad bit is that the child was actually glad he was woken up. Glad that people were taking care of him. Little does he know his comfort and ease means nothing to us. Because, well, “we have to take care of other patients too”. Most of the resident doctors will get away with this argument. Could we not have taken care of the other children, only to come back and examine this kid when he was awake? Yes we could have. But alas, we all leave compassion outside the emergency gate when we walk in for our 8 hour duty.  

“Is he in the Emergency Room to sleep?” – Yes, he is. Now let him be. 

[from Narrative Medicine]

CREDITS:

About the Author: Walid Farooqi, AKU MBBS class of 2016, is interested in Pediatric Emergentology.

Editorial Note: This is from a series collected as part of the Narrative Medicine Workshop at AKU on January 20^th, 2016. The editorial work was performed by the Writers’ Guild, an interest group at AKU, with the purpose to promote love of reflective reading and writing, within and outside of  AKU. 

     

DISCLAIMER: Copyright belongs to the author. This blog cannot be held responsible for events bearing overt resemblance to any actual occurrences.