I've got many doctors, I need a teacher.

So, it's been about 10 days since I started with internship.

I've been posted at a peripheral hospital in Mumbai for 2 months. From what I hear, this is probably the only place we get to actually do some medical work during our internship. The rest of the time, we interns just do mama-work (a peon's work).
(For any non-Hindi knowing readers, Mama is what we call the male helpers employed in the hospital to do all the non--medical work such as transferring patients, managing crowded OPDs, helping the doctors, etc. More often than not, they are the wisest and most experienced people in the institution. Mama is not slang, it's just referring to someone as 'my mother's brother'. It is a way to respectfully address a stranger who is elder to you.)

So far, it's been a good learning experience. Except, of course, no-one really teaches you anything. It's all self- taught. Trial and error. But then, nowhere in the Indian Medical Education System have I ever come across anyone who feels the need to teach us anything. That's totally unheard of. So how absurd of me to expect someone to do something like teaching, right?

So I have looked up youtube videos of all kinds of procedures: how to give I.M./I.V. injections/how to collect blood/how to give salbutamol nebulizations, etc. Sounds crazy, right? Well I did that because I'm just too scared thinking about what procedure I may have to do in the Casualty tommorow, and how bad it would be if I didn't know how to do it.

The nurses taught me how to collect blood, and give I.M. injections, how to start I.V. lines. Some were sweet and patient about it. Others just treated me like shit. But I just hovered over them till I learned.

There are still many more things I got to learn.

Today, for example, I was sent to do blood collections for the very first time. I knew it theoretically, had seen the youtube videos showing it, had observed someone do it long back in college, but had never practically done it.

The end result: A totally freaked out me, alternating between forcing myself to give it one more try on the poor patient and giving up and begging the pissed-off nurse to do it for me.

By the end of it, we had a wardful of patients with multiple pricks on their arms, and, thankfully, with the sisters' and the mama's help, all the blood ready to be sent for the tests.

Only one time did I manage to collect a patient's blood perfectly, at one shot, and I almost let out a huge cry of victory, in a wardful of sleeping and/or being tortured patients at 6A.M.

I'm sure this kind of scenario can work only in India. An intern who doesn't know how to collect blood is sent off to do it for an entire ward, and is expected to know how to do it, of course, miraculously, and no-one, absolutely no-one, even thinks about the patients for one moment. Thankfully, the patients also don't protest. They definitely didn't when I was pricking away multiple times at their ante-cubital veins (or what I thought looked like their ante-cubital veins).

I don't think they have such an option anyways. I mean they do have the option, but it's not really there, you know? Mostly, patients in Indian Government hospitals are treated like shit. There are exceptions of course, but in general, this is the impression I've got after all these years. Patients in these hospitals are treated like shit, just because they come from a not-so-privileged and not-so-educated background. I'll be writing more on this later.

For now, let's focus on the teaching part, or the lack of it.

I learnt how to give my first stitches from the mama, on an 8 year old with a CLW (Contused Lacerated Wound) on her scalp. It was, of course, a very messy job. But no-one cared. The mama tried his best to teach me well.

The actual medical officer who should have taught me, sat outside and read the newspaper.

That's the way things work. Everyone learns to deal with the system. And everyone gets moulded by the system, to become a part of it in the future. No-one tries to change it much.

The Professors berate us for not being hardworking and sincere, for not wanting to learn. But I beg to differ. I know there are quite a few professors who want to teach, and even try to. Very often, they don't know how to. But mostly, it's the PG students who teach the UGs, and that too because it gives them practice and helps them with their studies. And maybe because they know what it's like for the UGs. They've been there, done that.

The senior and highly qualified doctors, the ones who get paid to teach us, they hardly ever teach. It's a shame, because all their years of experience just goes to waste.

I'd like to add over here that, in these 4 and half years, I have also come across some fabulous teachers, who love their profession and who love teaching, who have scaled impressive heights in their fields and who still don't look down upon students. They've taught me, and they've taught me well. They have been great inspirations, and I hope to be like them someday.

So, here's my promise. If ever I'm in a position which requires me to teach, during my medical career, I solemnly vow to actually teach, to the best of my abilities.

For now, I just wish someone would teach me how to collect blood, insert scalp veins, take sutures, drain abscesses, write correct prescriptions, resuscitate dying patients etc. Because without that, I'm just scared all the time.

And I don't see how that can make me a good doctor.

P.S: Also, I still haven't heard the Eminem song from which my title for this post was inspired. I hope it's a good song.