surgical strike vs surgical reforms

Making their child a doctor is many parents' dream . This is especially true in most of the so called  underdeveloped countries, where daily challenges of life make dreams of a beautiful future soften the ugliness of present day survival. There are different reasons besides having prestige in a society, but the bottom line remains that in brining financial security for their children, how much  their parents struggle while supporting them to become doctors.

Doctors are born heroes, they live through life miracles and witness the strength of human beings when the going gets tough. They hold the hands of those who have phantom pain, and those who cannot hold themselves for other reasons of mind and body. They witness the ultimate weakness in our potential inability for self care and dependence on others to feed, clean, hold, and put to bed and bed pan.

Then on the other side, the news flash of the reality that doctors burnout. So many are leaving the profession of health and healing to keep their own sanity. The daily tasks of computer clicks, quality measures, insurance denials, patients demands, cost of medications and  medication rationing; to fit things into the insurance tier, can make these resilent souls have an out-of-body experience on a daily basis.

The other day I was told, "she left last month", one of  the doctors I knew well, and then yesterday, "he left", another doctor I knew. They could not bear the torture of man and machine: administrative and everything electronic. The software for electronic medical records and billing, care more about human clicks on a key board then the tender loving human touch for patients. It is like death by clicks. The odds are against us by the surgical strike brought down by machines and their masters. The burden of that struggle is to balance our computer clicks with human touch in our profession, which has crushed many of our colleagues with beautiful minds and souls.

Now is the time for doctors to look for restorative surgical reforms from becoming stressed, diabetic, obese, hypertensive, alcoholic, bald, big-bellied, thick-glassed, grey-haired and sleep-deprived individuals. We must save ourselves to save humanity; after all we are human first. We need better understanding of self care, sleeping well, eating well and living well to become beautiful like movie stars again. We need to practice what we preach to our patients.  No one will argue that a doctor is always a star in their own lifetime movie, named by living though the stages of life; they are always there ready to provide care.

To some, the fight is to keep up the most precious values of being a doctor alive and well.  Others are sadly down-trodden, though they remember once upon a time they were the guardians of health and healing, too.