Here's a well written piece by one of my junior colleagues..... Sriniket. Good job, dude!
(Edited for this blog by yours truly)
Doctor bashing seems to be the trend today. Everywhere I go, I get to hear a medical horror story about how some satanic medical practitioner had the balls to ask for 500 bucks after giving a measly injection or scribbling gibberish on a paper with his name on after asking some idiotic questions like "what did you eat on that day?"; " is it a throbbing pain or a bounding pain"(like one can make that out!) and of course the biggest sacrilege of them all "that bloody quack had the audacity to tell me where to get my xray /usg/ blood work, he must be getting a commission..... all doctors are just white coated pimps!"
It has been just more than a year since I have qualified to become a practicing physician but already people look at me as if I am Ambani or at least a Birla in waiting who will very soon be driving around in a BMW bought by money which apparently we get by looting the pained, already much taxed masses. Let me make it clear at the outset when I graduated from my institute I didn't get anything other than all my SSC and HSC documents and threatening words from the office that very soon I will have become a medical officer in the govt. public health centre nearby where i will spend the rest of my days giving out malaria pills and pain killer injections to 'tatya , bandya aajibai and others' (no disrespect implied). I was told in most cases by my own batch mates we will get a princely salary of 25k. WOW!!!! I wonder which other 24 year old gets that much money at that age and then the answer came" every moron who ever graduated from college with any lame ass degree gets more than that! In fact most people who didn't bother with graduation get that". Independent sources tell me rickshaw-wallahs in Thane get more dough than that. Why should I ask for more? ALL I EVER DID WAS GET A GOOD RANK IN A HYPER COMPETITIVE EXAM AT THE THRESHOLD OF ADULTHOOD. I only gave 4 sets of freakishly subjective examinations in which my fortunes can be decided in the end by what I wore to the exam hall, my caste, my language skills, my relations with the college departments and MAYBE by my knowledge and I haven't even begun ranting about my experiences with post graduate entrance exams!
Let me be very clear i have nothing against any of my friends who are into any other stream, good for you guys you had the good fortune to steer away from this field by design or by accident! I am sure all of you are doing great now and you all deserve every dollar, every euro ,every pound and every rupee(for the few that still live here) that you make. Nor will i trivialize for a moment the troubles you people go through in your graduate lives. My problem here is on a whole different level . I want to know why does the layman have a problem with a medico earning big money . of course we as medical students are also to blame here. My 66 months in Kolhapur taught me that many students are not comfortable with this idea and their ideas of success in this world come across as rather weak and limited in scope (again a personal opinion with no disrespect implied whatsoever) while i don't believe even for a moment that a fat pay is worth losing one's good name , I believe it's reasonable to expect reasonable remuneration for your skills , abilities , aptitude and work.
Let's get the numbers straight. My information about branches other than medical and engineering is painfully limited, but i am sure that won't be a issue here. There are 18 government medical colleges in Maharashtra and around 20 private ones. Engineering- I think there were 639 in Mumbai-Thane region..... there were 620 last week and it will probably hit 700 by the end of this month. Aspirants for both fields give the same exams almost with the obvious variation being Bio and Math. Because of the sheer numbers even if i consider there are 20 great colleges in this state) that will come to a figure of at least 5000 people who end up with good quality peers , teachers , facilities and by extension good prospects. and these guys wont even be close to the best in the country. The best guys are studying in the IITs, NITs and BITS. All together this comes to around another 20 thousand students with excellent prospects. My basic point is you can expect to be Maharashtra rank 3000 and still graduate from a very good institute. What happens in the medical side of the entrance is that in Maharashtra unless your rank is within 500 you have a steep climb ahead. All those people who say all government colleges are the same and they are all good are DELUDED! The reasons are many and I won't get into them...... this write up is already too long. Somewhere around rank 700 rank you have three choices- pick up below average (read baaaad) college or take up a BDS (dentistry) seat which are even fewer and third option is give up, pick up an engineering seat which is always there or give another attempt!
My point here is that at rank 700, a medical graduate is probably studying in a very bad place where he is deprived of many facilities and opportunities. These guys are all mostly very good students, toppers in their respective schools, cream of the milk pot that is the PCB stream. These guys are now stuck in very mediocre places for a very long time and that has an effect.. ...believe me it does! These people are those who are within 1 percent of the state. Even if they come out unscathed still with the fire in the belly to tackle the big monster that is PG entrances what will it lead too! Again if I consider only the popular PG choices which is about 8-10 subjects..... each has not more than 20 seats in our state....maybe 30. And again this includes the who's who of crap such as Nanded, Akola, Yavatmal and Ambejogai! To complicate matters further there are about an equal number of people arriving at the starting line from the private colleges which have hundreds of seats but all off which are auctioned to the highest bidder! People put their life savings to get their children into these courses....for what?...... private colleges where there are no patients and government colleges where there are no facilities and almost no teachers.
So once again, there is a cohort formed by 1 percent of the population and among these only 2 percent can move to the next level! Now you go and do the math! I am sure this is the equivalent of doing your engineering from the BIG SEVEN IITs and then wanting to get into one of the IIMs! These are the odds the very best off the PCM stream have.....each and every medical student has to go through the same odds to get even the most pathetic seat in the worst possible college. If I talk about the odds of doing the medical equivalent of a IIT + IIM. the odds get mind numbingly small!
We as a society are so used to throwing money , " ooh he is a consultant , he did his B.E from VJTI and MBA from IIM-A ' he should obviously get 40 lakhs per annum, he deserves it!!!" What is the salary that a surgeon passing from KEM can expect.. I will be damned if it's more than 40-50 thousand and he is still not done with his studies, mind you ! And that's the best possible outcome! The guy is 28-29 years old, he hasn't slept properly for the last 4 years at least! He has cleared India's second most difficult exam (IAS tops the chart obviously) with flying colours and he has sacrificed his whole youth. He basically smells of phenyl ! Also bear in mind that Infosys and TCS are not waiting around to hire this guy. His only option is to stick with a government seat if the decision he took as an 18 year old has to make any financial sense in the long term. When this guy finally turns 35 and decides I need to start enjoying the good things in life and enter private practice, he comes upon people saying "If you wanted to make money, you shouldn't have become a doctor(thank you very much Aamir! I am sure the next batch of people who believe you and stick to dialysis for years thinking transplant is a luxury and not a necessity in renal failure will remember you in their prayers as they hurtle towards their painful and inevitable ends!)".
So my appeal to all my non-medical friends.....never question a doctor's fees if you are satisfied with the outcome. You are paying remuneration for the struggles and sacrifices he makes in his youth. You are paying for the fact that he depended on his parents for basic living expenses well into his late twenties and in spite of being among the best in the state he gets treated like something that fell off a garbage truck! As for my medico friends- let's stop selling ourselves short, we are an elite bunch and it's time people realize it! Expecting to get good money for the efforts is not a bad thing. And let's be frank......the pay for interns , residents even super-specialist residents is pathetic. Let's change our outlook!
-DR. SRINIKET RAGHAVAN
PS: Check out this blog too..... http://doccartoon.blogspot.in/
(Edited for this blog by yours truly)
Doctor bashing seems to be the trend today. Everywhere I go, I get to hear a medical horror story about how some satanic medical practitioner had the balls to ask for 500 bucks after giving a measly injection or scribbling gibberish on a paper with his name on after asking some idiotic questions like "what did you eat on that day?"; " is it a throbbing pain or a bounding pain"(like one can make that out!) and of course the biggest sacrilege of them all "that bloody quack had the audacity to tell me where to get my xray /usg/ blood work, he must be getting a commission..... all doctors are just white coated pimps!"
Let me be very clear i have nothing against any of my friends who are into any other stream, good for you guys you had the good fortune to steer away from this field by design or by accident! I am sure all of you are doing great now and you all deserve every dollar, every euro ,every pound and every rupee(for the few that still live here) that you make. Nor will i trivialize for a moment the troubles you people go through in your graduate lives. My problem here is on a whole different level . I want to know why does the layman have a problem with a medico earning big money . of course we as medical students are also to blame here. My 66 months in Kolhapur taught me that many students are not comfortable with this idea and their ideas of success in this world come across as rather weak and limited in scope (again a personal opinion with no disrespect implied whatsoever) while i don't believe even for a moment that a fat pay is worth losing one's good name , I believe it's reasonable to expect reasonable remuneration for your skills , abilities , aptitude and work.
My point here is that at rank 700, a medical graduate is probably studying in a very bad place where he is deprived of many facilities and opportunities. These guys are all mostly very good students, toppers in their respective schools, cream of the milk pot that is the PCB stream. These guys are now stuck in very mediocre places for a very long time and that has an effect.. ...believe me it does! These people are those who are within 1 percent of the state. Even if they come out unscathed still with the fire in the belly to tackle the big monster that is PG entrances what will it lead too! Again if I consider only the popular PG choices which is about 8-10 subjects..... each has not more than 20 seats in our state....maybe 30. And again this includes the who's who of crap such as Nanded, Akola, Yavatmal and Ambejogai! To complicate matters further there are about an equal number of people arriving at the starting line from the private colleges which have hundreds of seats but all off which are auctioned to the highest bidder! People put their life savings to get their children into these courses....for what?...... private colleges where there are no patients and government colleges where there are no facilities and almost no teachers.
So once again, there is a cohort formed by 1 percent of the population and among these only 2 percent can move to the next level! Now you go and do the math! I am sure this is the equivalent of doing your engineering from the BIG SEVEN IITs and then wanting to get into one of the IIMs! These are the odds the very best off the PCM stream have.....each and every medical student has to go through the same odds to get even the most pathetic seat in the worst possible college. If I talk about the odds of doing the medical equivalent of a IIT + IIM. the odds get mind numbingly small!
We as a society are so used to throwing money , " ooh he is a consultant , he did his B.E from VJTI and MBA from IIM-A ' he should obviously get 40 lakhs per annum, he deserves it!!!" What is the salary that a surgeon passing from KEM can expect.. I will be damned if it's more than 40-50 thousand and he is still not done with his studies, mind you ! And that's the best possible outcome! The guy is 28-29 years old, he hasn't slept properly for the last 4 years at least! He has cleared India's second most difficult exam (IAS tops the chart obviously) with flying colours and he has sacrificed his whole youth. He basically smells of phenyl ! Also bear in mind that Infosys and TCS are not waiting around to hire this guy. His only option is to stick with a government seat if the decision he took as an 18 year old has to make any financial sense in the long term. When this guy finally turns 35 and decides I need to start enjoying the good things in life and enter private practice, he comes upon people saying "If you wanted to make money, you shouldn't have become a doctor(thank you very much Aamir! I am sure the next batch of people who believe you and stick to dialysis for years thinking transplant is a luxury and not a necessity in renal failure will remember you in their prayers as they hurtle towards their painful and inevitable ends!)".
-DR. SRINIKET RAGHAVAN
PS: Check out this blog too..... http://doccartoon.blogspot.in/
Thanks for taking the time to share this very interesting post with us. I enjoyed these articles from your blog. Have a great rest of your day and keep up the posts.
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