Government Hospitals and Internships....

I work in the Psychiatrics Ward in the local gov’t hospital. I don’t know how many of you have ever been to AIIMS or Moolchand or Safdarjung or any other government hospital, so I don’t know how many of you will be able to relate with what I say or write rather! The government hospital I’m interning at is like all other Indian government operations, if not worse. Imagine starting your day at work with the sight of a dog peeing at the door of the building. Yes it is a hospital. The entire hospital is spread out over an area of some ten acres. That means individual buildings for most of the departments including the various wards. And a kitchen building, which also houses the department of biomedical waste disposal! Again yes it is a hospital. My OPD is on the first floor sandwiched between the ophthalmic OPD and the neonatal unit. There are three doctors, who sit here, and about ten interns (including me) and residents. So, it’s like this that this department has been around for some 50 years, and the hospital has been around for some 90 years. And I do believe that since the day it started it has not been cleaned or maintained. For the third time yes it is still a hospital for humans. I go to work on just (thank god) two days in the week. And trust me when I say this that those two days are enough. The very first day I went there I was sent to the ward to “observe” patients. The word is in quotes because we were the only ones doing it. The staff nurse and the head nurse and the resident were busy chit chatting about the TV programs. It is sad I know, but that is life. I was trying to come to terms with the fact that there were about ten men and seven women in front of me who had lost most of their mental faculties and had no idea where they were and in some cases who they were, when the doctor came for rounds. P-A-T-H-E-T-I-C that is the only word I can use to describe the experience. The patients were treated like bugs under scrutiny by them. It shocked me. In all my life I never thought that the problems of another person could be looked upon so dispassionately by the very people to whom they had gone to for the solutions.